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Southern
highway Sarath Athukorale and Heather Mundy from the civil society group accused some officials in the Road Development Authority (RDA) of using this project to achieve their own ends. Excerpts
of the statement: This improved trace was called the CT (Combined Trace) and was accepted by the RDA. It was estimated to cost Rs.15 billion. The northern deviation was done to give direct connection to the Galle Road close to Panadura while the southern deviation brought it close to Galle and the Port. Both these deviations ran through abandoned paddy fields. The CEA in giving permission for the project were asked to change the trace and used the excuse of the recreational area of the Bolgoda Wetlands near Moratuwa to alter the northern deviation. Your article said government officials blamed rising land costs for the increase in compensation. But this is not the real cause. The increase is due to two reasons. With the change of trace done by the RDA more than double the number of people are losing their homes. In addition instead of running through abandoned paddy fields it runs through residential property and productive paddy fields and estate lands. Therefore compensation is vastly more on the Final Trace (FT). The designers' trace which incurred minimal compensation costs is now totally abandoned and the government has to bear this huge cost. Because they have chosen to go through villages the RDA has to build many more over/under passes to preserve the social structure of the village. The total cost has gone up to Rs 33 billion. Currency devaluation since the loan documentation calculated at Rs 72 to the dollar would have taken the maximum cost of Rs 15 billion to Rs. 21.5 billion. Where has the other Rs.11.5 billion gone? Certainly not to the resettled people who are living in abject poverty as highlighted in the press. The Sunday Times report says that the cost of the compensation is now estimated as Rs.4.5 billion In the October 2002 Resettlement Plan, the RDA estimate was Rs. 2.9 billion. For the same number of properties in two years the figure has nearly doubled. How can this enormous difference be explained? In any case the resettlement plan says that it had a detailed inventory of losses. Looking at the poverty created in the resettlement sites it can only be concluded that somebody other than the resettled people is getting the money. The government must carry out a transparent investigation of this project. Transferring the Project Director and sitting back is not the way to be accountable for public money. Any government has limited resources. While the government allows the RDA to do what they want with no control of purpose or spending they will not have any money available for health care, education, drought relief, rural industrial development, subsidising the effects of rocketing oil prices etc., etc. The media and the few who are aware of these facts owe a duty as patriotic citizens to inform the public that their money is being wasted. Response We would like to comment on the increased costs of land acquisition and resettlement under the project, which have indeed exceeded original estimates. This is due to significantly higher land and asset valuations than originally expected, based on the principle that replacement value is used as a basis for determining compensation amounts instead of the traditional method of depreciated value, and the implementation of a more complete compensation package compared to previous road projects. The increase also reflects the rapid increases in land prices generally in the south of the country, some of it ironically a consequence of the government's commitment to build the southern highway. Both of these factors are far more significant in the final land and asset acquisition cost than the relatively marginal increase due to unavoidable modifications to the highway's alignment. That said, the alignment modifications have definitely added to the acquisition costs, although they have not changed the major component of the project's cost (the construction of the highway itself represents more than 80% of the total cost). The additional land costs became unavoidable when the Central Environmental Authority required that the highway's alignment be adjusted to avoid wetlands in two sensitive areas and reduce the impact on the urban areas around Galle. As a result, during the project's detailed design many adjustments were made, some large and others small, in close consultation with communities who came within the project's adjusted alignment, although not all communities wished to participate in this process. The objective was to develop a highway that carefully balanced country, community and economic benefits against financial, social, and environmental costs. Your readers will appreciate that for a project of such magnitude this is a challenging task, requiring skilled study and assessment of many factors, including environmental impacts, technical considerations such as traffic flows, terrain and soil conditions, economic and cost considerations, road safety, and social impacts, including resettlement, community separation, noise, and many more. The outcome has been an alignment that maximizes benefits while minimizing social and financial costs. It is definitely correct that more houses are now affected compared to when the project was conceived, an unavoidable consequence of the efforts to avoid the important wetland and urban areas. The increase in affected houses has been kept to the minimum possible through careful technical design and extensive consultation with communities who could be affected as the modified alignment was being developed and fine-tuned. As mentioned earlier, the higher cost of land acquisition and resettlement, however, represents only a fraction of the total project cost about which there seems to be considerable confusion. At the time the project was approved by the ADB's Board of Directors in November 1999, the total cost was estimated at about $300 million, equivalent to Rs 21 billion at the exchange rate at the time. Depreciation of the rupee alone would bring that amount to approximately Rs 30 billion today. With this cost the project's economic rate of return was 14.5%, comfortably above the usually-accepted cut-off value of 12%. Construction costs have increased, although not significantly and definitely not as a consequence of alignment modifications, but benefits have likewise increased, so the overall economic viability of the project remains intact. We've also heard from time to time that modifications to the alignment have moved the highway far away from traffic centres thus affecting its viability. This is simply not so. The basic network structure hasn't changed, and the final alignment is at the most within a few km of the earlier alignment. The increased travel distances for vehicles joining the highway are so small, relative to the vastly reduced travel times on the highway compared with the existing Galle Road, that the impact on viability, if any, would be negligible. In fact, for Galle, the addition of a purpose built access to the city, which was not included in the original design, will significantly improve access and reduce travel time, and dramatically reduce noise and traffic impacts for the Galle community. By their nature, large scale and complex projects such as the Southern Highway inevitably run into problems of various kinds during implementation. It is important to detect and address these problems promptly, and civil society and the press can play an important role in helping to identify these shortcomings. While expressing concerns about costs and problems, however, one must not forget the benefits of the project. When completed, the expressway will reduce travel time, cost and accidents and contribute to increasing employment and incomes in the southern part of the country by promoting agriculture diversification, reductions in post-harvest losses in agriculture and fisheries, and increased tourism flows, ultimately contributing to the area's economic development and poverty reduction. Business Editor's note: The RDA was also asked for a response to the allegations from the citizen's group but there was no reply. |
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