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by Elmo Leonard

Government wants to set up a fund to buy back fishing craft from people who are not fishers, but obtained fishing boats from NGOs, following the Asian tsunami. This move is intended to supply fishing craft to the many genuine fishers who lost their boats, but have not been compensated with new craft, fisheries consultant to the FAO mission in Sri Lanka, Leslie Joseph told the media.

"With time, donors for fishing craft will run dry," Joseph said, at the launch of a book titled, Livelihoods in post-tsunami Sri Lanka: "Building back better." The book is an Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) publication, priced at Rs 200, and available at leading bookshops in Colombo. The book is translated into Sinhala and Tamil, and will be available shortly, at Rs 150.

IPS executive director, Dr Saman Kelegama said that an estimated 150,000 people lost their main source of income due to the tsunami. A majority of them have now returned to some form of livelihood.

IPS, associate fellow, Paul Steel, who edited the book said that incomes are generally lower than pre-tsunami; many people were already poor pre-tsunami; some people will fall through the cracks i.e., 20,000 people are estimated to be sick and injured after the tsunami. There are also those who are too traumatised to work or who need to care for others.

The publication says that over half of the affected households were linked to fishing including fish workers (labourers on boats of others) fishers (boat owners who fish on their own boats) and boat owners who own vessels but do not fish. There are also those in fish processing, drying and selling, as well as boat and net repair.

In some cases, boats are inappropriate for the type of fishing, the recipients carry out and are lying unused. Some boat repairs have been substandard, due to the rush and there are also continuing shortages of nets and engines. Joseph said that far too many small fishing craft have been doled out, further depleting the already spent coastal fish stocks. The cycle would go on and the situation would worsen.

It had been easy for NGOs to provide fishing craft, take pictures of it and send it back to the countries from where they came, Joseph said.

Steele said that the fishery management before the tsunami was weak and is now almost non-existent. There is a real need for managing fish stocks, strengthening fisher groups and investing in fishing infrastructure, such as harbours, especially in the east where facilities were lacking before the tsunami struck.

The problems faced by the fishers pervades through all other sectors affected. Farmers had been overlooked due to the focus on fishing. Affected farmers still face problems of salty land, but the monsoon would improve it, the book says.

There is a need for micro-entrepreneurs to engage more with the marketing of the produce of the tsunami affected, across sectors. NGOs and others should encourage and support households to produce higher value-added products that are demanded by the market.

The private sector marketing and skills should play its part, Dr Kelegama said. Many tsunami-affected women have restarted their cottage coir industry. Coir exporters must teach them skills needed for producing higher grades of coir and coir products for export.

Dr Marit Haug, a Norwegian currently in Sri Lanka, a contributor to the book, is researching on topics such as civil society and NGOs, social exclusion and conflict, including a project on the relief and rehabilitation process after the tsunami in six districts in Sri Lanka. Dr Haug said that fish caught in the rural sector did not get into the marketing process.

As in Norway, such local stocks could be processed. Joseph said that fish caught in Sri Lanka is largely with the use of gill nets. Often, the fish remain dead in sea water for hours, before it reaches the shore, and is unfit for processing. The answer would be the deployment of multiday fishing craft, which employ the longlining technology.

But, if government resorts to multiday fishing craft, the thousands of small fishing craft will have to be done away with; many thousands of fishers who depend on coastal fisheries will have no means of livelihood.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.