Archives

Meeting the drought challenge

As if to confirm our worst fears about the environmental damage the stepped-up “development drive” in Asia is causing, an ominous “Brown Cloud” is reported to be hanging over the vast region. The haze of pollutants is believed to be already spreading its ill effects in Pakistan, parts of which are experiencing severe drought and crop failure, among other serious consequences.

If the increasing drought in Southern Sri Lanka is anything to go by, this country too is beginning to wilt in this environmental scourge of man’s own making. However, what is noteworthy about Sri Lanka’s Southern drought is that it is proving to be a recurring phenomenon - year in and year out. There is a misleading, popular notion that the drought comes to an end with the monsoon downpour but much to our consternation it makes a comeback the next year, with even greater ferocity. Right now, we are witnessing this devastating cycle in Southern Sri Lanka - the Hambantota District figuring once again as one of the worst affected areas.

This time round, however, we are having a multiplicity of government agencies and institutions to deal with this tribulation. In addition to a ministry handling the subject of Environment and institutions, such as the Central Environmental Authority, we also have a Social Welfare Ministry and a Southern Region Development Ministry - all of which should be geared and ready to take on emergencies of this kind. It wouldn’t be to the point to hunt for scapegoats at this juncture but to indicate the need for concerted and collaborative action among these agencies to contain the crisis.

Last year, when the drought acquired a stranglehold over the South and hundreds and thousands of Southern inhabitants were reduced to destitution, helplessness and dire poverty, drought relief was said to have been maldistributed and mismanaged. In this respect too, the drought and the famine which followed could be said to have been man- made to a degree. In any case, the Sri Lankan experience is that droughts are followed quickly by floods and when drought relief is finally supplied in a sizeable measure, the floods have already arrived. So seemingly uncoordinated are the efforts expended in handling these crises. This stricture, incidentally, applies to successive governments which could be described as having “fiddled”, while the South relentlessly burnt away.

While the freaky drought-flood sequence testifies to the pernicious damage man has been doing to his natural environment, through his zest to “develop” by hook or by crook, food scarcities and widespread destitution during such crises, testify to another aspect of his greed and urge for acquisition. We still believe that no citizen of this country could die on account of starvation and beggary but multitudes of the South, last year, were certainly on the brink of dying due to hunger and neglect. This couldn’t have been attributed to the fact that there wasn’t enough food and relief to go round, although they were not readily available, but because the little relief which reached the South in time was also maldistributed and subjected to irregularities.

The complaint was made last year and we hear it this year too, that drought relief is not reaching the poorest of the poor or those in dire need of it. No less a person than Social Welfare Minister Ravindra Samaraweera is reported to have said that drought relief is not reaching the needy on account of a lack of coordination among the agencies handling the resources concerned. Food and other essentials are not really reaching the hinterland where the desperately poor live. This seems to be happening this time as well.

One couldn’t remain complacent that our reputation as a state which has retained some of its welfarist credentials, would come to our rescue in crises such as these. If corruption and malpractices are allowed in the drought relief operation, a human tragedy cannot be averted. As we said before, all State agencies and others involved in fighting the drought need to get their act together and put on a united effort to ward-off the ill- effects of this crisis. Corruption and irregularities in this exercise, must be immediately wiped out.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager