Damage: Sri Lanka was one of the worst affected countries in the region from the world's most powerful earthquake in 40 years which triggered massive Tsunamis and caused extensive damage to several Asian countries on December 26, 2004, writes Sajith de Mel and Nalin Munasinghe, Daily News 231206 at http://www.dailynews.lk. Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 241206

For Sri Lanka the human loss was enormous with over 31,000 people dead, over 15,000 injured and over 5,000 reported missing and nearly a million people displaced. The loss of assets was estimated to be around US $ 1,000 Mn, consist of housing and private property, transport infrastructure, fisheries, harbours, hotels, restaurants, schools, hospitals, water and electricity supplies and telecommunications.

Extensive damage to infrastructure badly disturbed the livelihoods of the people. The biggest challenge the government faced was bringing the lifestyles of the affected people to normalcy. This required the reconstruction of the damaged houses and providing them livelihood assets such as boats for the affected fishing communities.

Apart from the severe physical damage caused, the family unit was affected, which is considered essential for the smooth functioning of the social order of any society. However, the manner in which the government machinery responded to this unforeseen catastrophe is commendable although certain shortcomings were inevitable.

Considering job losses due to tsunami, data provides that almost 86% of those affected lost their jobs or the income earning activity. Most importantly mainly women, who did not have a job or an income earning activity, now required one to earn a living to support their families.

Also a very few households retained their main source of income (11%), while 87% of affected households

 lost their main source of income from work due to tsunami and 9% of the affected lost their main source of income with the death of their main income earner.

Statistics provides that the most severely affected was the fisheries, agriculture and livestock sectors. As many as 96% of households deriving their main income from fisheries lost their main source of income, while for agriculture and livestock it was 90%.

The percentage of households that lost their main source of income from other sectors were construction (84%), manufacturing and services (89%), handicraft (84%), trade (87%), public sector employment (79%).

However, according to sources that as a result of the combined effort of the government, private sector, civil society and international community, between 70-85% of the households affected by tsunami had regained their main source of income by the end of 2005.

Much has been done with respect to post tsunami recovery and reconstruction, and much more needs to be done. It is expected that recovery and reconstruction will take another two to three years. Natural disasters are inevitable and it is almost impossible to fully recap the damage caused by a disaster. Some disasters occur instantaneously while others have a low onset.

However neither the exact timing nor the location of the occurrence of disasters like earthquakes is difficult to be anticipated in advance. As such one should never assume that history does not repeat nor should underestimate the lessons to be learnt through the massive earthquake which triggered tsunamis and caused extensive damage.

Lessons to be learnt from tsunami

One prominent lesson learnt was the importance and the necessity to have an efficient communication system. A communication system is indispensable to inform the general public of the probable catastrophe at hand in advance and to inform them to take preventive measures.

Had the Richter scale which measures and identifies possible earthquakes been in operation, many lives would have been saved and the severities of the damage lessen. Public awareness should be an integral component of any such plan.

Electronic and print media and communication networks nevertheless play a major role in creating awareness among public. However it is quite reasonable to assume that in many natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, storms and landslides these modes of communication systems are likely to be damaged and the communication disabled. Hence an alternative strategy needs to be in place, such as satellite communications.

Most importantly the need for an efficient and a coordinated data collection system became apparent. Due to the non availability of such, many organizations were involved in data collection which led to duplication of efforts resulting in a waste of resources and thereby incompatible data. Also the data collection and the release of its results took a considerable time period aftermath tsunami.

Also a significant lack of coordination was evident between the government, NGOs and international donors and private relief operations, in planning and implementation of tsunami development programs projects. This highlights the need for an efficient and a coordinated plan at the National level to execute data collection rapidly subsequent to the occurrence of a disaster.

It requires having trained teams for data collection in place and pre-prepared sample questionnaires for data collection. Additionally a preplanned map of field work needs to be in place. The data collection effort needs to be complimented by focus group discussions, workshops with all the stakeholders to validate the key information collected and required to develop plans.

This could be achieved through the 325 divisional secretary divisions and about 14,000 Grama Niladari Divisions covering the whole island.

Following tsunami devastation, a substantial gap became manifested for all occupational categories. The total annual labour requirement on average specifically for tsunami related work for the period 2005-2007 for Masons was 9484, while for carpenters (2882), plant operators (2321), aluminum workers (1018), bar benders (789), painters (1190), welders (267), mechanics (304), electricians (748), elementary workers (17162).

However the vocational training system was unable to accommodate sudden demands while trainers lacked knowledge to conduct accelerated training. Trainers felt committed, but lacked the sensitivity needed when dealing with a special target group.

This became apparent after the tsunami when trainers had to speed up the training courses to accommodate the high level of demand in the above job categories.

It was evident that even though the trainers appreciated the need to accelerate the training courses to meet the unexpected demands, they could not adjust to the new demanding conditions showing that trainers often had no training on how to adjust to unanticipated situations. Therefore the training system needs to be more sensitive and flexible to accommodate unexpected capacities.

Skills training needs to be provided as per the needs assessment, and provision of training to more people than the estimated quantities would have negative effects on the wages of that particular occupation.

In some instances it was apparent that skills training were provided on an adhoc basis. However, skills training needs to be provided to the affected victims subsequent to finding a probable employer where the employer guarantees to hire the trainee subsequent to the cessation of the skills training program.

In turn, the employer benefits from a third party funded skilled trainee. A more effective methodology would be to provide on the job training for the victims of the destruction. This would ensure that the funds granted for skills training is not wasted.

Another lesson is to be learnt from "Cash for Work" activities. Many NGO's were seen paying higher daily wages for those involved in cash for work activities which was exceptionally higher than which is normally decided by the price mechanism by matching the demand and supply of labour.

These kinds of man - made distortions will make people economically and psychologically dependant on a third party. In such cases the repercussion would be that these people at a later stage been absorbed by the State welfare programs which ultimately burdens the government budget.

As such these donors need to focus on long-term livelihood development in order to make people more independent. One may also question whether paying a community to build their own community is really "community participation".

One of the most important aspects in community development is the maintenance of gender balance and ensuring that the fruits of developmental projects initiated in response to disasters are being equally distributed among the two distinct gender groups.

Women play an important role in a range of economic activities in economic sectors such as agriculture, fishery, food processing and tourism. However the opportunities for women to be involved in their preferred job roles are more often been disturbed subsequent to disasters such as Tsunami. As such a livelihood developmental project needs to make an extra effort to ensure that gender aspects are incorporated in livelihood related job and training opportunities.

In planning a development project such as tsunami livelihood development, requires experts such as economists, project managers, and engineers and so on. However it is questionable as to whether adequately sociologists and anthropologists were represented at the policy levels in developing these plans.

One may tend to argue that extensive field work was undertaken prior to developing these plans. However it needs to be borne in mind that "field work" in the development world has become merely a "field trip" and it is questionable as to whether an expatriate development professional would be able to gauge the socio cultural issues of the village affected by the disaster in question within a short period of time as opposed to the long time periods spent by anthropologists in studying these diverse cultures.

As such it becomes critical to engage sociologists and anthropologists in constructing development plans as one may tend to overlook the significance of the contribution made by these disciplines in the developmental world.

Another extremely important value base of social development programs like tsunami is that it emphasizes the importance of involvement and control of people who are the ultimate receivers of the fruits of development and the prime movers and controllers of the goal, direction and parameters of development. As such more time needs to be spent with the grass roots levels in devising the reconstruction and rehabilitation plans as they are the actual owners of the results of the plans.

Tsunami was sudden and its impacts were quite massive. Tsunami is just one of the types of disasters that a country may face. No more is Sri Lanka a safe haven as it was and is justified by the man-made as well as the natural disaster that has been taking place in the recent past.

Tsunami needs to be studied more closely as a case study, and the lessons thereof need to be incorporated to disaster management plans. The next natural or the man-made disaster will question the lessons learnt from tsunami.

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