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Arugam Bay hoteliers all at sea
By Frances Bulathsinghala
The sea is back to its docile self again after the mighty terror it unleashed on December 26. Yet Arugam Bay that virtual tourists' paradise, girdled by the gold of the beach and blue of the eastern sea, is now a heap of rubble - rubble that those who were depending on tourism for their survival are desperately trying to resurrect to the original status of solid walls.

The government decree that no hotels should be built within 200 metres from the coast is lost on these people who continue to regard the sea as their only form of sustenance.

"They ask us to build our hotels away from the sea. No foreigner or local will come to a hotel placed in the land region," says A. M. D. Ifam, owner of Rock View, a tsunami-hit modest inn.

M. S. M. Ismail, another tsunami-hit hotel owner, who had lost six of his family members in the catastrophe, is defensive when he speaks of the fact that he and others are reconstructing their hotels, or at least trying to, with whatever means possible, in the same location.

When we met him several devastated hotel owners, who were clearing the scattered debris, also joined him."Yes, we are rebuilding our businesses in the same location. We have no alternative," Ismail says adding that no minister or high official had visited them to discuss the problems they will face in relocating their hotels away from the sea.

"It is easy for them to talk. It is we who have to suffer," he says angrily. Naushad Ahmad, secretary of the Arugam Bay Tourism Association, says they wrote to Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike one month ago, requesting an appointment with him, but there is no reply yet.

"We have so many problems to discuss. We are just being asked to vacate but we also see some big hotels being rebuilt. We want to ask the Tourism Minister to allow us to function in the same locality and explain the practical problems we face. So far no one representing the government has come forward to see to our welfare or to consider the difficulty we have to under go as a result of the 200-metre buffer zone. For us, tourism was gleaned only out of the sea. It is ridiculous to think that tourists would come to an interior landlocked place for a holiday," he says.

Naushad, however, points to rapid reconstruction work taking place at hotels owned by foreigners who, he says, are not short of finances."It is not our intention to do anything illegally. We just do not want to starve. With no one there to really guide us we are left running from pillar to post to inquire into our fate and that of our industry. It is ironic that the government carries out no surveys, at least to check on the ill-effects of its new law. If it does it will see how desperate hotels owners here are trying to replace each tsunami torn brick," he says.

As he speaks, grim faces emerge from the row of destroyed buildings in which they are forced to live, occupying the least torn-down room or hall. Prior to the December catastrophe, virtually every house here had been transformed into a guesthouse, capitalizing on the fact that it was located near the sea.

U. Adambava, is one such resident who had turned his house into an eight-room guesthouse."I charged Rs. 1.000 a day without food and I was assured of enough money to feed my three children and wife. I managed to save some money also. Now with my house totally destroyed, the money which I had carefully saved is like a mere handful of coins," he says.

"We do not know where we stand with regard to our hotel business," he says. He tells his friends of the latest 'hearsay' that they will be able to carry on their hotels in the same location provided they live 200 metres away. There is a rumble of elation while he announces this news until someone points out that it could be a rumour.

Ifthikar Ahmad, a big-time hotelier who has been functioning in the area since 1980 explains that most of the hotel owners in the area are Muslims. Busy assisting an NGO with the beach clearing work, he points out that because of the 200-metre restriction, they cannot even seek a bank loan to rebuild their hotels in the same location.

"We just pray and hope that the Tourism Minister will respond to our queries and look at this issue as a social problem. The government should take into consideration that there are many others like us in other coastal areas as well. Our plight is also the plight of tourism in the country," he says.

Most of them having lost their relatives in the December 26 deadly tide, are now being swept on another tide - the tide of uncertainty. Having never been in want, they now find themselves on that narrow rafter of abandonment while the waves close in.

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