Executive Summary of Eastern Province
Needs Assessment Mission

REPORT FROM THE GROUND: EASTERN SRI LANKA
Written by Skip Whitney and Ahilan Aru

A field team of volunteers, including an international medical team working with an Operation USA representative, conducted a needs assessment in the Trincomalee District of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. The team chose to focus on Trincomalee because of ground-level information indicating that the tsunami’s effect on that area was particularly devastating. Sri Lanka’s Eastern seaboard was the area worst-affected by the tsunami, but specific and detailed information about the extent of the damage and the needs of the population there has been sparse. In response, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) is conducting on-going ground-level assessments throughout the areas in which it operates, including in the Trincomalee, Batticaloa, and Amparai districts of the Eastern Province.

Team Composition And Method

The team consisted of two doctors, a medical student, a field assessor, and the Operation USA representative. In addition, the team was joined in Trincomalee by a local TRO office staff member who assisted the team in accessing individual refugee camps. The team collected information in three ways. First, the group visited the local TRO district office in Trincomalee and obtained geographic and statistical information from TRO personnel working directly in the camps in that area on a daily basis. Second, the group visited several camps, both in the town of Trincomalee and in a more remote area north of the town. At the camps, the team conducted a specific needs assessment by touring the individual camps and interviewing camp residents, and also treated patients on-site. Finally, the group spoke extensively with a Sri Lankan government health officer responsible for a portion of the Trincomalee district.

Needs Assessment

The team found widespread devastation and urgent humanitarian needs in the district. Although numbers are extremely difficult to establish due to changing movement patterns and the difficulty in obtaining information from remote areas, Trincomalee alone appears to have over 40,000 people internally displaced in approximately 75 refugee camps. (These camps exist in a variety of areas; some are schools which have been temporarily commandeered for families, while others are simply open areas in which large, crude, tent-like tarp shelters have been set up.) Approximately 16,000 of the displaced people live in camps supplied exclusively by TRO; no government or other non-governmental assistance is available to those people. Another 24,000 people live in camps or villages for which TRO is either the primary relief agency or a critical relief provider. Analogous district-level reports suggest that the scope of the devastation in Batticaloa and Amparai districts is similar.

Urgent Needs

The assessment reveals that these populations have an urgent set of varied needs. Perhaps the most important areas are food and sanitation. The assessment team found that the displaced populations were struggling to provide adequate food. In one camp, nearly every resident had been a fishermen who had lost their boat in the tsunami. As a result, the residents had no immediate source of food or income other than that provided by external relief.

Sanitation needs are similarly urgent. TRO workers found camps north of Trincomalee with only one toilet for approximately 400 people. If this problem is not addressed quickly, the sanitation problems could lead to widespread dysentery and cholera.

The assessment team also found urgent infrastructural needs. Bridges along the coast in several areas had been broken, making access to affected areas extremely difficult. In some cases, whole villages were reportedly destroyed by the full force of the tsunami, yet some of these areas have not been visited by doctors. There is a particular need for mobile medical units to provide on-going care in such areas. Other significant needs include shelter, cooking implements, and desalination technologies. The assessment team also heard information suggesting that landmines had been dislodged by the tsunami in some areas and therefore needed to be cleared.

Finally, it is important to note that the Operation USA representative on the mission had also toured areas of Southern Sri Lanka affected by the tsunami. In his estimation, the level of assistance provided to the South dwarfed that provided to the areas he visited in the East, even though the needs were at least comparable. For example, bridges preventing the quick supply of relief to areas in the South were rebuilt within one week, whereas they remained broken in areas of Trincomalee, delaying medical missions from visiting areas affected by the disaster. While there was some international aid presence in the Eastern Province, conversations with aid workers suggested that there was no international attempt to comprehensively assess and respond to the needs of the people in the Eastern Province.

Longer Term Needs

While the immediate needs of the displaced population must be the focus of relief efforts in the short-term, it is clear that the communities affected by this disaster will require rehabilitative assistance in other ways as well. In some cases, whole villages have been destroyed, necessitating almost total infrastructural reconstruction. Even in places where most buildings survived, the groundwater table has been inundated by saltwater, making agriculture and well-usage impossible. These kinds of problems will necessitate sustained assistance over time, long after the international community’s attention has been diverted elsewhere.

TRO As An Aid Partner

The Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) is a non-governmental organization registered with the Government of Sri Lanka. TRO’s Disaster Management Unit has been undertaking emergency relief operations in the Tsunami-affected areas in the North and East of Sri Lanka (NorthEast) from the very first day of the crisis. Because it is the only NGO with a coordinated ground presence throughout the affected areas on the eastern seaboard, it is clear that TRO must play the central role in delivering critical assistance to this segment of the Sri Lankan population.