Crackers, a booming business in Kimbulapitiya

By Ananda KANNANGARA

Lighting crackers at functions or any other occasion is common in the present day society. It is seldom that one sees a function without lighting crackers. Deafening crackers are also used to chase away birds, wild elephants, monkeys or other animals who come to destroy cultivations. Millions worth of crackers are usually used by the supporters of politicians at election meetings and rallies during election time. These are few comments, made by cracker manufacturers at Kimbulapitiya, in Negombo.

Although Kimbulapitiya is an agricultural village, it is famous for manufacturing crackers. The village is located nearly 20 kilometres from Colombo. It has a cracker manufacturing history of over 90 years.

History reveals that villagers at Kimbulapituya were born tough to make crackers. Therefore the village is called as The Rathinna Gammanaya in Sinhala.

The Sunday Observer last week visited the Kimbulapitiya village to meet cracker manufacturers and also to see the development of the industry, especially during this Christmas and New Year festive seasons.

A leading cracker manufacturer and the owner of Royal Tarzen Crackers, Deshabandu Sepala Ruparatne Fernando said his father P. K. Fernando started the cracker manufacturing business during the time of former Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1956.

Bundles of crackers to be sent to the market

“I took over the cracker manufacturing business from my father in 1982 and I have been involved in the industry for the past 28 years”.

“There are 15 employees in my factory and each employee is receiving a monthly salary of Rs. 18,000 plus food and lodging”.

He said there are nearly 125 large and medium scale cracker manufacturers in Kimbulapitiya village and in addition, large number of people are in the business of manufacturing crackers at their homes as self-employment projects.

Dependent

Out of 1,000 familes in the Kimbulapitiya area, at least 900 families are involved in the industry and over 4,000 persons dependent.

Ruparatne said in addition to crackers, Sky rockets, Shell rockets, Colour shots, Letter Boards, ground wheels and wire sparks are some of the other varieties of fireworks manufactured in Kimbulapitiya factories.

He said, in additiion to pieces of papers, cotton thread and clay, various other chemicals such as potassium nitrate, barium nitrate, aluminum powder, potassium chlorate, and sulphuric powder are used to manufacture crackers and fireworks.

He said there are Government restrictions when selling several varieties of important chemicals such as Potassium Nitrate and Potassium Chlorate.

Accordingly, potassium nitrate should be purchased only from the Government owned State Trading General Corporation and potassium chlorate is available only at the Sr Lanka Navy Camp at Welisara.

Restrictions

“As there are no Government restrictions, all other chemicals could be purchased from the open market”.

Ruparatne also requested the Defence Ministry who has the sole responsibility to sell chemicals that are used to manufacture crackers to allow small shop owners to keep at least 50 kilos of crackers in their shops without any licence.

“At present many shop owners are reluctant to keep large stocks of crackers due to obstacles from area Police stations”. A cracker manufacturer, Gamini Peris, said `Surya crackers’, `Janahanda crackers’, `Royal Tarzan crackers’, ` Alidon crackers’ and `Hanuma crackers’ are the oldest cracker manufacturers at Kimbulapitiya.

The cracker industry history reveals that a resident of Kimbulapitiya, K.E. Perera who owned the famous `Surya Crackers’ had first sold foreign crackers to people in the area during 1940s. The crackers were imported from China and they received a great demand from people.

“As the demand for Chinese crackers increased to a greater extent, people at Kimbulapitiya learned the art of manufacturing crackers by using chemicals. Later the cracker manufacturing process gradually expanded and today Kimbulapitiya has become a household name for crackers”. “Since a lot of people use crackers for various festivals such as Sinhala New Year, Christmas , Ramazan and Thaipongal festivals Today the whole Kimbulapitiya area has become a cracker village.

He said even foreigners very often visit the village to see the cracker manufacturing process.

Foreign

Cracker manufacturer, 60-year-old David Mudalali said a foreign national from Pakistan visited Kimbulapitiya with a tour guide four years ago and bought a large quantity of crackers. But we came to know that he was caught at the Air Port for smuggling explosives from Sri Lanka.

“This incident was a good lesson for us and now we refrain from selling crackers to foreigners unless they use them here,”

A father of three and a fireworks foctory owner , 59-years-old Kulasiri Mansinghe said in order to promote this traditional industry and help the manufacturers, crackers are neither imported nor exported to foreign countries. But we sent a stock of crackers and fireworks to Maldives a few months ago to use at an international conference.

He said manufacturing crackers is also done in Kandy and Galle districts and sometimes those manufacturers send their productions to Kimbulapitiya since countrywide traders prefer Kimbulapitiya crackers and fireworks than others that are manufactured in other areas.

He said during the festive seasons a cracker manufacturer earns over 1.2 million due to festivals and celebrations such as new year , Ramazan , weddings and also for political rallies.

Chase

Deafening crackers are also used by people to chase birds and animals away who come to destroy their cultivations.

He said destroying cracker manufacturing factories by fire is also a common thing. He mentioned about a large fire that destroyed a cracker manufacturing factory in 1985 and said that measures have been taken to minimise such happenings thereafter.

A fireworks factory owner, 56-year-old Gunapala Singho of Kimbulapitiya said, in addition to the festive seasons, a large stock of crackers are sold during election periods and last year they received high profits due to having a number of elections in the country.