India's islands face tsunami housing crisis -report
22 Dec 2006 09:30:00 GMT Source: Reuters
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An elderly woman stands in front of her shelter at a camp for tsunami survivors in Port Blair, capital of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands. September 2005.
REUTERS/Bill Tarrant
By Kamil Zaheer and Sanjib Kumar Roy
NEW DELHI/PORT BLAIR, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Permanent shelters for tsunami survivors in India's Andaman islands do not reflect local needs and threaten to undermine the traditional way of life of indigenous people, a report said on Friday.
The 2004 Asian tsunami killed or left missing about 3,500 people in the remote archipelago of 370,000 residents when it slammed into scores of islands.
Nearly two years on, more than 9,700 families are without permanent shelter and live in temporary homes of corrugated iron which often become unbearable in the summer heat.
"Prefabricated steel structure houses ... have been conceived more on the basis on capacities of delivery agencies rather than community needs and priorities," the report by the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (SANE) and agency ActionAid said.
Homes for fishermen were being built on hilltops while farmers will get houses far from their fields, the report said.
Worse, the traditional lifestyle of the Nicobarese tribe -- who make up the majority of those who lost homes -- has been ignored by federal planners sitting in New Delhi more than 2,400 km (1,500 miles) away, the report said.
Nicobarese, most of whom live on the archipelago's southern islands, have traditionally lived in wood and bamboo houses on stilts that can withstand most earthquakes, a common occurence in the islands.
Old Nicobarese homes had lot of space between them where families keep their livestock, particularly pigs.
But planners have not factored this in, the report says.
"It will break up tribal society completely. It will fracture it," Samir Acharya of SANE told Reuters.
The government disagrees.
"The permanent shelters have been designed by the best experts from various ministries in consultation with tribal and grassroot leaders," Dharam Pal, the islands' relief commissioner, told Reuters in Port Blair, the archipelago's capital.
On Thursday, the government approved 12.21 billion rupees ($273 million) for reconstruction of houses and other "community facilities" for the islands' tsunami survivors.
But the report says "despite the diverse backgrounds and wide range of lifestyles of communities ... (the) government plans to propose a single type of house for 9,714 families."
LOCALS GETTING SHORT SHRIFT?
Acharya says the planned homes will be too small -- 450 sq. feet (42 square metres) and just four metres (13 feet) apart -- less able to withstand earthquakes than the more flexible traditional structures, and would require much more upkeep.
Anger over the rebuilding efforts spilled into rare violence last month when dozens of people were injured in clashes with police on Little Andaman island, 100 km (62 km) south of Port Blair.
Acharya slammed the government building agency as an "exotic body" with no knowledge of local culture and said houses made next to each other would not allow people to grow coconut trees.
"Every Nicobarese family normally has scores of coconut trees. They (government officials) have botched up the whole issue," Acharya said, demanding New Delhi allow survivors to cut a portion of the island's forests to get timber to build their own houses along with government financial assistance.
Last week, voluntary group Housing and Land Rights Network said many tsunami survivors in India's southern mainland state of Tamil Nadu still did not have adequate housing, compounding their trauma.
Cramped bathing spaces, tiny kitchens and lack privacy for women were among the problems faced by tens of thousands of people living in temporary and permanent homes, HLRN said.
More than 7,000 people were killed when the Asian tsunami slammed into Tamil Nadu's crowded coast on Dec. 26. ($1 = 44.71 rupees)
