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| Sunday, 2 January 2005 |
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Settling homeless main challenge The main challenge faced by the government is settling the displaced people and assisting them to start normal day-to-day activities. The tidal wave killed many thousands made several thousands homeless and damaged property on December 26. According to reports the worst hit is Sri Lanka while it occurred in the seas near by Java Sumatra Islands and affected India, The Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh. According to The Lead Manager, National Council for Economic Development (NCED) Sherman Gunatillake the government is working on a phased-out disaster management plan to restore the country. Immediate attempt is to provide logistic facilities for the tsunami refugees including food, clothing and medicine. In this effort all citizens are working as one family and support is overwhelming. Equal distribution of immediate relief is in progress despite the heavy damages to the infrastructure facilities in the costal belt of the country. Gunatillake said that he is pleased to see the arrangements made by the Ceylon Tourist Board together with all the hoteliers, tour operators, airlines and diplomatic missions supported by the NCED Tourism Cluster to handle the foreign tourists at BMICH. Sending tourists safely to their homes in batchers are in progress systematically, although some of them have lost all their belongings including passports and airline tickets. Clearing the dead bodies and restoring road infrastructure is challenging. Various teams of foreign expertise in disaster management are now working together with our forces and relevant authorities. The next and most important phase is to relocate the people who have been made homeless and at present residing in refugee camps. Most people have lost everything as they have run for their lives. Therefore government will have to assist them and come up with a mechanism to get their Birth Certificates, National Identity Cards, Bank Pass books and Deeds Gunatillake was of the view that the economic impact of the tsunami could be limited as this has affected mostly to the Tourism and Fisheries industry which together account for around four percent of GDP. However the damage to the country's infrastructure is very much great. Therefore the construction industry should kick start now to rebuild the country and it will continue to make a much bigger contribution to the GDP in the next couple of years. Most of all the Morale and the Psychological impact of the episode cannot be measured, he added. Gunatillake said that it is interesting to see the stand of the insurance companies on the claims of damages caused by the tidal disaster. The NCED Financial and Capital Market Clusters will be liasing with Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (IBSL) in this process. The President's Office has setup a special fund for urgent relief and rehabilitation. all state institutions, members of the public, business leaders as well as the expatriate community are contributing towards this while direct foreign aid is flowing in. |
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