Financial Times

Tea industry awaits flood relief
It is now three weeks since the worst floods since independence ravaged parts of the southern province and caused much damage to infrastructure and business, particularly the crucial low grown tea sector, which now produces more than half the island's crop.

The plight of flood victims received much coverage in both the print and electronic media as did the politicians who are quick to turn up at such disasters to be filmed and photographed distributing other people's largesse and to promise relief for those affected.

The floodwaters have long receded and along with it the TV crews and packs of reporters but some of the promises of speedy assistance to revive the vital tea industry are yet to be fulfilled.

As one private tea factory owner in Galle has put it, interviewed by a team from this newspaper and quoted elsewhere in this section, the floods came in a flash and in a flash destroyed what had been built up over several years. The government, he said, should provide relief equally fast.

To be sure, some assistance has already arrived, as we were able to witness during a visit to the affected areas last week. Teams of engineers and technicians from those companies that have long serviced the tea industry are already doing the rounds, going from factory to factory, to repair damaged machinery. The government also moved fast in clearing the roads and repairing the power and telephone lines damaged by the floods.

But the smallholders and tea factory owners, who grow the tea for which Arab and Russian buyers are prepared to pay a good price and who today are the mainstay of the Ceylon tea industry, are upset that the most urgent part of the promised relief, the cash, has still not been forthcoming. Most of them have had their homes and workplaces submerged and suffered considerable material damage, apart from the mental trauma that such disasters bring.

The ferocity of the floods has been unprecedented, and unexpected, and no government could have been expected to have prepared for a disaster of this magnitude.

Nevertheless, it is not too much to expect government machinery to have moved somewhat faster, especially to help revive an industry as vital as tea, particularly from a government that is the darling of the private sector and which boasts of having in its ranks technocrats and whiz kids from the corporate world.

It is this same lethargy and lack of political will that seems to be behind the impasse in the peace process. The LTTE may have its own hidden reasons for not going to the Tokyo aid conference.

But the excuse it has given for pulling out of the peace talks - that the government has not done enough to alleviate the sufferings of ordinary people - is certainly valid, how ever much the LTTE itself is guilty of exploiting and terrorising its own people. Although the truce and the easing of restrictions have made life somewhat easier for the people, the main beneficiaries of this whole peace process are the LTTE and the government.

The lot of ordinary folk has not improved significantly. The focus has been on the big projects that are likely to become juicy contracts for the private sector. It is indeed ironic that a government that launched the peace process by insisting on getting the day-to-day issues facing the Tamil people out of the way should now be confronted with such an impasse at such a crucial moment merely because of the lack of progress in improving the lives of ordinary people in the north and east.

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