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Urgent Need for Monsoon Shelters in Moratuwa

The Aid Sri Lanka team worked with local partner Impakt Aid to provide provisions and water and sanitation projects in various camps. Keen to provide a more permanent solution for the residents of the camps in Moratuwa, the partnership planned to assist with temporary housing.

Moratuwa is situated just south of Colombo. It is commonly thought that the real destruction of the wave stopped further down the coast. However, the beach in Moratuwa was lined with tightly packed, flimsy, self-built shanty towns which were easily destroyed even by the relatively small wave.

Finding land in the area has proved incredibly difficult. It is a built up area with very few available plots and with commercial value so high, there is a reluctance to use what land there is for housing for these low-caste refugees. Several plots of land have been offered to us for this project but each in turn has been denied before the building can start.

Six months on and many of the camps now contain transitional shelters of wood. However, the 368 people of “tent camp” have not received such an “upgrade.” The conditions are appalling with 98 families squeezed in to 46 tents. In addition to the cramped conditions, the tents are now covered in mould spores which are causing respiratory problems amongst the residents, particularly the children who cough constantly while playing “round and round the garden” with you- a sheer delight to them.

The tents are also ill-matched for Sri Lankan weather. In the heat of the sunshine they are hot, airless and stuffy. Worse still, due to severe space restrictions the canvass is not pulled taught and the tents leak. With the monsoon season upon us this is of severe concern. In a recent single downpour the site, including the inside of the tents, was under two foot of water. This situation is aggravated by the fact that the site is surrounded by a concrete wall and there is nowhere for the surface water to go.

It is clear that something must be done to help these people, and without delay. Aid Sri Lanka has therefore decided to use the funding for the proposed temporary housing project to build monsoon shelters on the existing land. Aid Sri Lanka and Impakt Aid will be working together on this project.

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