Burdened by years of conflict, the people of Sri Lanka’s east coast thought massive international fundraising for the region following the 2004 tsunami would redevelop the economy and improve the quality of life. Instead, the benefits were frittered away through ignorance, incompetence and corruption. Melanie Gouby reports.

Fish are rare in the waters off Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka’s southeastern coast, but dozens of motorboats line the beach like colourful beached whales. Donors' names are painted on their sides proclaiming Western generosity. Their wrapped motors show they have never been used.

Four fishermen are sitting in front of a small cabin, repairing a net bitten by a dolphin the night before. None of them has a boat of their own, despite the row of abandoned hulls. They must collaborate and rent boats from companies based in Colombo.

"When they came to help us after the tsunami, NGOs gave the boats to the village leaders because they wanted them to supervise the distribution,” says Haj, 34. “But the leaders kept the boats to themselves. They tried to sell them to us. Normally it costs 300,000 rupees. They told the people to give them only 100,000 rupees. But it is still too much for us.”



In the wake of the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka in 2004, international NGOs rushed in to offer the money of generous donors from all around the world. Village leaders, local authorities or local NGOs were used as intermediaries between international agencies and the population, but very little of that money actually went to the people. Corruption diverted it to a handful of pockets.

"Many NGOs came to help, but most of them did whatever they liked. They were not aware of the context, the culture, the politics. They did a lot of harm and misspent their money", says K Arulvaratharajah, field coordination assistant at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Trincomalee.

Five years later, the coast is still strewn with houses in ruins and the lack of infrastructure is appalling. To travel the 300km from Colombo to Arugam Bay by car takes ten hours. Phone lines are rare and the internet is almost impossible to access. The local economy is plagued by this isolation and people have to survive by accumulating small jobs. They help in a hotel in the high season, cultivate their rice paddy in the low season and go fishing at night.

NGOs could have helped develop the economy for the long term. Instead they built cheap houses and gave poor quality boats to just about anybody, regardless of their real occupation.

"I remember meeting somebody here who had a restaurant. He did not even have a cooker. No one had looked into other kinds of needs. They assumed they were all fishermen because it was a coastal area", says Louise Shah, head of monitoring and evaluation for the Community Livelihood Support Program, a UN project.

Naleen, a hotel owner in Arugam Bay, had to rebuild everything step by step, taking loans with private banks that he repaid with money made through a coconut timber export business. He does not understand why aid organisations did not set up loans for businesses like his own. "25 people live thanks to me now. What can a few boats do? All the hotels along the beach just reopened a year ago because we were not helped to start again."

NGOs also employed local staff, whose ethnicity and personal interests could impede their objectivity. In some instances, only certain communities benefited from the aid. Instead of bringing everyone together as many had hoped, the disaster and ensuing aid relief exacerbated the ethnic strife. Tensions between the coastal people and those inland were fuelled by the unequal inflow of money and the impression that the other community always received more. Sinhalese farmers suffered from the diversion of the government's money towards the guerrilla conflict in the north, Tamils suffered from being the target of an increased military presence in the region, Muslims suffered from the retrenchment of their community and ensuing lack of support.

The four fishermen on the beach are angry. To them, it has all been a waste. They saw NGO workers coming in nice 4x4s, staying in five stars hotels and leaving boats no one would ever use. With the tsunami, they lost everything – their houses, their livelihoods, for some of them their families too. They never saw the money sent by international donors, and once they were finally able to start fishing again, they discovered that the fish were not there anymore – a natural phenomenon after a tsunami.

People here are disillusioned and melancholic. Tomorrow may bring peace or war, for them it is "same old, same old". Nothing seems to matter much anymore.