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Kirinda: killed at rebirth
Architect pins blame on UDA for the collapse of a community-centred rebuilding plan
By Samir Shah
An almost resigned cynicism creeps into architect Pradeep Kodikara’s voice as he recalls a late December meeting of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA). The SLIA took up the task of urging its members to assist the Urban Development Authority (UDA) in post-tsunami reconstruction work. The UDA was sorely undermanned at that time and desperately needed help to cope with the massive task.

Kodikara asked whether the UDA had a plan for Kirinda. He had just returned from delivering relief supplies there and knew the area through a few private commissions. When he received a negative reply, both he and a colleague, Arosha Perera, offered to prepare a plan. The UDA gratefully accepted the offer, and along with Sanath Liyanage, who had already volunteered with the UDA, and two other architects, Varuna de Silva and this writer, they began a six month odyssey.

The team made their first site visit in early January, meeting with community and religious leaders as well as a few of the affected families. Although the UDA had no accurate maps of the area or statistics of affected people, they formed the basic arguments for their master plan that day. Kodikara explains that Kirinda is unique because it is a major pilgrimage centre during the Kataragama season. It is also a majority Muslim town with a history of continuous habitation for hundreds of years.

“You can’t simply move a town like that,” says Kodikara. “Besides, the town was well outside the 100-metre zone.” The villagers also told the team about a five or six-year-old plan that sought to relocate the Muslim community in a housing scheme consisting of flats at an inland area to be named Kirindigama. Though the plan never got past the foundation stone ceremony, many of the town’s residents were alarmed by their temporary housing being placed on the same site with the same name.

“You have to understand,” explains Kodikara, “this is a Muslim town in a heavily Sinhalese area, dominated by the JVP.” Because of this, the people in the town seemed wary of government plans to move them.

The alternative, however, raised a difficult issue. Most of the reconstruction happening around the country was on plots of government land that were being allocated to the affected families. Since most people in Kirinda did not have clear title to the land on which they lived before the tsunami, it would be difficult to establish new plot boundaries if the village were to be rebuilt on the same land.

The proposed solution was a system of land pooling. The idea was that all residents would give their land into a trust that would then subdivide the land equally according the master plan. All but two people in the community agreed, and the idea went forward into the master plan.

A preliminary plan was presented to the UDA on January 12 and the team was asked to proceed with the concepts discussed. A more formal presentation was made in early February to the UDA and the Prime Minister’s Office where it received official approval.

At this point, according to Kodikara, all that was needed was an official survey of the town including the 100-metre buffer zone demarcation. Even this, however, proved to be an uphill struggle.

After a month, the survey was finally completed by a private consultant who found that the red pegs which the Coast Conservation Authority (CCA) uses to mark the 100-metre line had simply disappeared. Apparently the villagers had staged a protest in the middle of the job and removed the pegs.

Kodikara, hoping to resolve this problem quickly, went to Kirinda a few days later. On that trip, recounts Kodikara, they drove from one government office to another, looking for some record of the 100-metre line. They visited the Divisional Secretariat’s Office, the Survey Department offices in Tissamaharama and Hambantota and even the UDA office in Hambantota, hoping to find somebody who knew something. But in all cases, all they found were officials inexplicably absent, or in the case of the entire Survey Department, on strike.

Discouraged, but not defeated, Kodikara contacted the CCA in Galle, found the engineer who had been on site on the day of the protest, and with the aid of the Prime Minister’s Office, arranged for him to meet the private surveyor in Kirinda and mark the 100-metre line.

Finally, in mid-April, all the necessary pieces were in place for the reconstruction to begin. The Prime Minister’s Office had arranged contracts with donor groups for housing and public buildings in Kirinda and the architects had produced a workable plan that had community and local government support. With all parties present, including UDA officials, the master plan was given final approval and April 29 was set for the presentation of this plan to the Kirinda community.

Kodikara and Liyanage gave the presentation, answered questions and explained the proposal. After nearly four hours, there was general consensus, and with minor changes, the plan was approved by the community.
At the end, Chamal Rajapakse, the area parliamentarian, announced that the architects and all government representatives would proceed to select the site of the first model home that day. It was at this moment that the entire project fell apart.

UDA representatives who had been present at master plan presentations and had given approval at all stages of the process, suddenly found themselves in late April, standing in Kirinda for the very first time. They chose this moment, just after receiving community approval, to make an astounding decision.
They decided, in spite of the fact that all housing plots and buildings were clearly outside the 100-metre buffer zone that nothing could be built on the seaside of the road. They claimed that the UDA had made this policy in all coastal towns, and claimed to be acting for the sake of consistency. But according to Kodikara, by putting a blanket rule in effect, the UDA has killed the possibility of anything positive happening.

“It was devastating,” says Kodikara, “We felt powerless to do anything. We decided to work with the UDA to avoid something like this. The premise is that the more you communicate with the UDA, the more chances you have of succeeding. Of course, now we know that’s basically rubbish.”

Over half the houses were planned on the seaside of the road, outside the buffer zone. These will now have to be moved elsewhere, but nobody seems to know exactly where. “There’s no land anywhere else for them,” laments Kodikara, “and they don’t want to leave.”

Since then, the team received word from the local government agent that the villagers had withdrawn all support from the land pooling idea or any government plan. Kodikara has tried writing letters to the Prime Minister’s Office in hopes of pressuring the UDA to change its stance. One major donor has also expressed deep disappointment at the UDA’s apparent lack of interest in sound policy and has been forced to reconsider funding the project at all.
But those efforts have been to no avail. At the moment, the UDA and another of the major donors have decided to go ahead with the model home. They plan to build on identifiable private land, with no overall plan and no solution for the rest of the people who are being left out of this equation.

This, of course, raises questions about the very nature of the reconstruction. “It looks as if there is some kind of big picture that nobody is aware of,” says Kodikara. He goes on to point out the other shortcomings in the process that raise these doubts.

“The UDA and the Pradeshiya Sabha totally messed up on the statistics on numbers of affected houses and people. These are vital to any planning, and they were changing and inconsistent throughout the process.”
The team initially planned for 100 houses in Kirinda and 260 houses in the overall master plan that includes the Sinhalese resettlement of Anderagasyaya, just inland of Kirinda. However, in the last count, there were far fewer houses destroyed or damaged than 260, with only a handful of them being the houses of the Sinhalese.

Yet the houses in Anderagasyaya are nearly complete while not a single Muslim in Kirinda has a permanent home yet, much less a coherent reconstruction plan for the village.

“It’s a huge blunder. The government is using funding just to build – without qualification of whose houses are damaged and whose are not,” protests Kodikara. “We volunteered to house tsunami victims, not to plan low-cost mass housing. The whole point was to help the people of Kirinda and that has now gone out of the window.”

Nobody knows what will happen to the people who own land on the seaside of the road or if Kirinda will be a viable community in the future. Pradeep Kodikara, who has now officially removed himself from the project, holds little hope. “They are making piecemeal decisions with no plan and the result is that they are destroying the community.”

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