Developing prime lands in Colombo:

Under-served communities to benefit

By Dhaneshi Yatawara

Colombo is on an expeditious track to become a hub for economic development. It has already become a safe city, free from fear, a spacious place to breath in fresh air and decorated with green and shade – with a view easy on the eye. Colombo which has a high potential for investment, needs more land for business purposes. According to calculations Colombo can free up to 400 acres of commercially viable land.

Additional Secretary, Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, Eng. Rohan Seneviratne

According to the statistics available with the Urban Development Authority, nearly 53% of Colombo’s population, live in under-served communities such as shanties, shabbily maintained apartments and line-houses.

Congested

There are shanties or squatters, slums, dilapidated labour quarter sites, service schemes and low cost flats clustered in different parts of Colombo metro. Shanties or squatters could be considered as the worst of its kind. These categories of settlements are extremely congested and these habitats do not have basic amenities, and frequently inundated during rainy days resulting in damp soil and unbearable smell.

Within Colombo, these communities live on nearly 900 acres of land. According to the UDA the number of households to date in these communities is more than 68,000 with a population of over 300,000. Over half of the residential population in Colombo live in low-level housing, occupying only 10 percent of the total area of Colombo. The lands they live in are mostly in the northern and eastern parts of Colombo such as Modera, Borella and Dematagoda.

New phase

The plan is to provide housing facilities for families living in these under-served settlements through the development of prime lands in Colombo. The Urban Development Authority will implement these programs with private sector developers.

The policy of the Government under the Mahinda Chinthana - vision for the future, is to make Colombo and other key cities to be on a par with environment-friendly modern cities in middle income countries while also setting up such cities as commercial hubs in South Asia.

The much-needed urban area development is entering a new phase. Urban area development which was earlier done without proper planning, has now come into strategic focus under the Urban Development Authority (UDA).

Environment police

The Ministry of Defence and Urban Development and UDA held an Investor Forum recently on the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project. Here a section of the gathering.

“Changes began taking place after President Mahinda Rajapaksa handed over the UDA to the Ministry of Defence in 2010,” Chairman of the UDA, Nimal Perera told the Sunday Observer. He said that the organisation which was once making immense losses was now getting back to its prestigious position.

“Colombo was a dirty city then. Garbage was lying in piles everywhere. There were no dustbins to put garbage in. On the instructions of Secretary Rajapaksa all this came under one system. He then organised the Environment Police to monitor cities so that people do not pollute it with garbage,” he said.

In addition to the Municipal Councils and Pradeshiya Sabha cleaning system he outsourced the cleaning to a few private companies with the sole aim of properly organising the cleaning system of Colombo city. Then places to dump the garbage were arranged out of the city limits.

Investors

“Colombo is the most livable city in South Asia. The Ministry of Defence and Urban Development with the UDA have transformed the city and now Colombo is ready to receive investments of various business categories,” said Perera.

According to the Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development Eng. Rohan Seneviratne, 30 acres of land of these commercially viable areas will be available for investors. It’s the investor community who can add value to the competitiveness of this asset, he said.

“Since the Western Province contributes to nearly 50 percent of the GDP of Sri Lanka it is of utmost importance to make this the most livable city and gear it up for economic development,” he said.

Assets

“It is vital that we enlighten the business community on the future development projects of the country and inspire them to become stakeholders,” he said.

To make the business community aware of these assets, the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development and UDA held an Investor Forum recently on the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project.

The Metro Colombo Urban Development Project also known as MCUDP, is the mechanism that makes a litter-free Colombo with convenient walkways, better and safe roads and that made pavements obstacle free.

Several other projects are also underway to make Colombo an eco-friendly and a hub for economic development under the MCUDP.

The UDA has already initiated a massive program to identify unused but investable lands in Colombo and suburbs and to divest identified lands among prospective investors.

The UDA has today become a government institution which creates new avenues to attract potential investment to the country rather than performing its core objectives.

Urban development was low during the period of terrorism.

However, with the end of terrorism, the government initiated a number of programs, particularly commercial, city development and beautification programs. Colombo is now a clean and green city, attracting foreign investors.

Mihindusenpura

To release these commercially viable lands 15,000 housing units are under various stages of construction in the Colombo area, according to the Chairman of the UDA.

The first 500-unit project that was completed and handed over over to the slum and shanty dwellers in November 2013 – was Mihindusenpura in Dematagoda. The UDA will continue the project to address the housing needs of the nearly 68,000 low-income families in these backward communities.

“Many past Governments attempted to bring a solution to this problem. Though the UDA had no involvement in those initiatives we can see that the difficulty in getting lands to rehouse the shanty dwellers and inadequate funding made those projects collapse,” said Head of the Project Planning Unit of the Urban Regeneration project under the UDA, E.A.C. Priyashantha.

Yet this time under the guidance of the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the UDA launched the program, coordinating with other ministries to liberate their lands to rehouse people and issuing a Rs. 10 billion debenture. When rehousing had to be done there was a method to get the necessary lands and money was there to make it a viable project, according to Priyashantha.

The land liberation program is not only confined to Colombo. The UDA is spearheading projects in key cities of the country like Kandy and Kurunegala. The intention is to elevate the cities to commercial hubs along with proper planning, according to Priyashantha.

The Ministry of Defence and Urban Development has recognised the fact that addressing the housing problem in the city of Colombo should be an integral part of the overall Urban Development strategy for the western region of Sri Lanka. The plan is to provide housing facilities to families living in these under served settlements though liberalisation and development of prime lands in the City of Colombo. The Urban Development Authority will implement these programs with the cooperation of private sector developers.

Cooperation

Yet people living in these under-served communites comprise almost all the labour force that make the Colombo city function. They are an important part and parcel of the society. “Many of these people work in the harbour, Railway Department and Municipal Council forming their entire labour force. They are playing a pivotal role in the proper functioning of the Colombo city,” he said.

Numerous solutions were tried ou by successive governments during the past to find solutions to the City's housing problems but there was no proper plan of action or firm determination to address the real housing issue in Colombo with a vision to develop the City of Colombo on a par with other cities in the South Asian region.

Today the UDA has not only built proper housing for these people but have taken steps to lay a support line for these shanty dwellers to get used to their new surroundings. The duty of the project coordination unit of the Urban Regeneration project is to analyse the true situation these shanty people live in and coordinate their requirements to the project management. “All their rehousing locations were in close proximity to their original homes without taking them away from the area they were living in for many years,” said Prasad Ranaweera, the Head of the Project Coordination Unit.

A team of UDA officials from this unit, which also includes graduates in sociology, have visited every house of these under-served communities.

“Under the directions of the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the UDA first selected the 40,000 shanty dwellers living under the worst conditions among the under-served communities,” said Ranaweera.

Such communities who were living in Aluthmawatha, Colombage Mawatha, Cyril C. Perera Mawatha, Wanathamulla in Borella were areas where they could easily vacate the land.

“The re-housing project is now located in the closest proximity to their original houses and today back in their original ‘watta’ only few families remain – mainly due to unsettled legal disputes within their families and financial problems.

Consent

To those with financial problems we are coordinating with well-wishers to get support to settle payments for the new houses,” said Ranaweera. With regard to protests by a few communities initially, Ranaweera said after the Mihindusenpura rehousing project was completed in Dematagoda, people of other shanty areas gave their consent.

“People said that they will relocate if they are given houses like those at Mihindusenpura. And as for the UDA, we were planning similar projects for these people. We were planning to provide a much better living standard for these people and they accepted it at the end without any protest,” he said.

Training the people to use the facilities that were made available for them in the new apartments was a responsibility of the unit Ranaweera headed. From dumping garbage systematically to organising community events, the officials of the unit got involved.

They were there to ensure that the people would happily in their new homes and surroundings. And this will continue in their future endeavours too.

The challenge lies in the future. More people settling down in cities and urban areas is not an isolated event but a global phenomena. According to UN-HABITAT half of the global population live in cities and it is predicted that within a decade or two nearly 60% of the world population, that is around five billion people will become urban dwellers. Sri Lanka will be no exception.

The next big challenge for the authorities and urban planners is to face this and ensure the smooth functioning of cities.