How far has rehabilitation work gone?

Alfred Sasako
Six months after the tsunami swept through the Solomon Islands’ Western and Choiseul Provinces leaving scores of people dead and homes and other properties destroyed, barely anything has been done to rebuild shattered lives.

Hundreds of people who fled their seaside villages on the outskirts of Gizo, Western province’s capital, are living in crammed conditions in makeshift camps which have dotted the hills above the township since the tsunami struck last April.

The seaside villages around Gizo bore the brunt of the tidal wave which hit at 7:30 on the morning of April 2, this year.

At least 55 people lost their lives in the disaster which was triggered by an undersea earthquake. It is estimated that about 20 percent of the deaths occurred in villages around Gizo. Hundreds of homes were either wiped out or partially destroyed. Schools remain closed in many villages.

Despite efforts by community leaders to erect makeshift classrooms, authorities appear to have turned a deaf ear to the request.

The situation appears to be no different in just about every island—from the Shortlands in the north, to the tiny volcanic island of Simbo in the west. In the Roviana Lagoon, many seaports are without wharves since the tsunami.

Reports suggest the situation is no different in Choiseul, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s home province, where houses and other properties were also destroyed.

In Gizo itself, the main road that runs through this sprawling seaside township remains in pre-tsunami condition of ever-widening and deepening potholes, despite an S$800,000 funding grant to fix the road. The grant was provided by Taiwan last November.

Little has changed: I was in Gizo in early October waiting to board a ship on my way back to Honiara that Monday afternoon after I flew into Gizo from Honiara the day before. It was my first visit since I took up my first ever field posting there as a reporter exactly 31 years ago.

Except for a number of new buildings, little has changed in the township. Much of the roadside are covered in tall, overgrown grasses. It seemed they were never cut in years.

Many of the timber-framed shop buildings remain unchanged, except for a few coating of paints to camouflage their looks. These shops sustained some damage, but overall they withstood the tsunami. One thing was obvious: business is booming.

“There’s lots of business here, but the support services from government are almost zilch,” one businessman said.

Of immense interest to me was the plight of the tsunami survivors—people who escaped only with their lives and clothes they had on that fateful April day.

Given such a huge outpouring of financial and in-kind support from overseas and locally in the days and weeks after the disaster, I was more than curious to see what progress, if any, had been made to help the victims. Since I had some time to kill before my boat arrived, I hired a taxi and headed to the camps where the survivors are.

In an exclusive interview, community leaders—Tengati Toma and Pastor Neemia Boberio—told of the plight of their people and how they were coping. Tama is the chairman of Camp 1 while Pastor Boberio is chairman of Camp 2 where more than 370 former residents of Titiana village have resettled.

Their people, they said, are demanding an explanation from authorities as to where the money has gone, now that the rehabilitation activities appear to have been scaled down.

NGOs such as World Vision and Oxfam have scaled down their operations, the two leaders said.

“We want to know where the millions intended to resettle us have gone. We heard so much about the big money in the media and through other people. But we have not heard this officially from the government as there has not been a meeting with us, the victims.

“And as you can see, we are still living in plastic tents six months after the event,” both men said.

“Our children can’t go to school. There is no water in the camp. There are hardly any water tanks around. It is chaos everywhere,” they said.

“We made representations to the provincial education office in Gizo to establish makeshift classrooms or transfer the children to Gizo primary school. But to date, the authorities have been very, very slow in coming,” Seventh Day Adventist Pastor Boberio said.

Water is a major problem in the camps. Every day, women cart water in buckets from the steep valley below—about a kilometre away. Many of the water tanks intended for these camps appear to have ended in the wrong hands. Others disappear along the way.

There is another problem the victims are faced with. They described it as “a general lack of interest (in our plight) shown by the very people our communities have elected".

“We have not had one single face-to-face meeting either with our MP who happens to be the Minister of Finance, or the Premier of Western Province or the Provincial Secretary since the tsunami hit us on April 2,” Boberio told me in the interview.

“They probably drove past the camps in their air conditioned cars, but to stop by and call a meeting with the people in the Maneaba (meeting house), I cannot recall,” Toma who represents Camp 1 said.
Camp 1 is home to about 300 residents of what used to be New Mada village.

“We simply don’t understand this kind of attitude and behaviour,” they said.

Left in the dark: According to the two leaders, the communities devastated by the tsunami have been left in the dark.

“We simply don’t know what is happening, who to talk to, or even where to go to get any assistance. Each time we go to the provincial office, we are told to see a different person who does not even know who is running the show. It is embarrassing to keep coming back, especially to ask for emergency food relief,” one community leader said.

The tsunami victims are planning a peaceful protest march in Gizo and were awaiting a police permit.

The leaders told of how emergency supplies intended for the victims ended up in the wrong hands. The whole operation, it seemed, got on to a wrong start from day one.

“The people from the National Disaster Council in Honiara were in Gizo distributing foodstuff, garden tools, cooking utensils and mattresses on arrival in Gizo. They had no idea who they were dishing out the supplies to.

“When we asked to be involved because we know those who were in genuine need, we were turned away. As we feared, much of the supplies ended up in the hands of relatives, friends or people who were never affected one way or the other. Those who needed them the most missed out altogether,” they said.

They also told of one incident about a barge allegedly carting a shipload of emergency supplies to Gizo from Honiara around August/September this year.

As the boat left Honiara, the owner allegedly rang the Provincial Government to prepare payment for the charter. However, when the boat arrived in Gizo, not a single item could be found onboard. Payment was declined.

To this day, no one seems to know where the shipment ended up.

As I boarded my cab, we drove past the Ministry of Works depot, just on the edge of town. Heavy equipment seemed plentiful and are lying idle in the yard. Whether or not they are operational, no one seems to know.

Although it was early afternoon, there was hardly anyone in sight, perhaps an indication that none of the machines are operational. Or perhaps it was an indication of the general public service practice endemic amongst its workers that the only time one sees them in droves is on paydays.

Titiana was the first stop of my hour-long cab hire. It is a seafront village on the western outskirts of Gizo, settled by Kiribati people during the colonial days so many years ago. I remember visiting this village in 1976—part of my work as the province’s then government Information Officer,

We had a meeting in the Maneaba (traditional community meeting house) then. Almost the entire village was in attendance. 

Unlike my visit three decades ago, this time it was different. The village was abandoned, empty, lifeless. A few houses that remained standing were a testimony to this.

There were no children. In fact, there was no one at all to explain to us what actually happened that fateful morning. Unlike my 1976 visit when the village was teeming with life, this time the quiet was eerie. The feeling of abandonment was overwhelming.

Lifeless: Just down the road, there was what was left of a big concrete house. Only its foundation remained after the tidal wave hit the village, twisting the entire building and uprooting it with its foundation. Partly submerged in the sand, it was sitting on its side.

“Did you see that over there?, my guide pointed in the direction of the house. “That was what’s left of a concrete building that once stood there,” he said.

On the other side of the road, there was a pile of uprooted trees, metres high, which looked like a log pond.

“That’s where the wave left all the trees that stood in its way,” the driver said.

A few metres down from there, the road was impassable.

A wooden bridge which once stood there had been swept away, cutting off the only access road to Sagilagi, another village a few kilometres north of Titiana.

The driver told me there were two other small but vital wooden bridges further down the road which were destroyed by the tsunami.

“These bridges provided the only access to Sagilagi and Pailoge, another village. People living in these villages have been virtually cut off from Gizo. They can’t take their produce to the Gizo market. It is a long way to carry their market produce to where a truck can pick them up,” he said.

“We thought these vital links would be a priority in the so-called rehabilitation work, but to-date nothing has been done. I’m afraid, this is as far as we could go,” he said.

He swung the car around and headed inland.

“We are going to visit Camp 1. There is someone in Camp 1 that you need to speak to,” the guide-driver informed me.

Temporary shelters of blue and yellow plastic sheetings greeted us on both sides of the road. There were women, young boys and children sitting under these shelters, showing little or no interest at all on what is happening around them.

We were told Tama had just left—he was on his way to town.

“These people are tired of visitors. They want things done, but after so many months, so many visits, they have given up,” the driver told me.

Tired of visitors: “It seems our misery had provided a golden opportunity for visitors to take our photos and then we hear nothing more,” one camp resident was heard complaining recently.

We drove on. There was new clearing ahead. A cab was parked just ahead of us with its motor running. As I stepped out of my taxi, I could see why.

Just in front of the cab was a huge, deep ditch which made the road impassable.

Again, I was informed that even four wheel drive vehicles found it hard to drive through this huge hole in the middle of the road.

Ahead of us were more shelters. We turned and headed back into town. In the afternoon rain, we drove past the hospital area in Gizo township itself.

Staff houses which once stood between the hospital and the foreshore had all gone, destroyed by the tsunami.

Whatever was left had been demolished to make way for new staff housing promised by the government.

“But why build in the same place, knowing fully well that if there were to be another tsunami, the houses would once more be destroyed?, I asked.

“Well, you have to ask the national and provincial government that,” the driver said with a degree of resignation.

Part of the problem it appears is that the provincial government had run out of land in Gizo to resettle its own workers, many of whom are victims of the tsunami and also living in tent shelters.

A well-known Chinese businessman in Honiara has begun earth works in the area after his firm was hand-picked for the S$3 million-contract, which was reportedly varied recently and increased to S$5 million. Further ahead where the road ends, stands the Gizo prison. Work has also begun there after public servants were forced out from the site in September.

Government sources said the land had been taken over by Gizo Hotel in exchange for a huge debt run up by a taskforce which used the hotel during the so-called civil unrest.

Members of the taskforce used the hotel as a base as it consulted with the people of the Western Province on the proposed state government system.

“When the public servants evacuated the area, Gizo Hotel sees it as an opportunity to move in and claim the land,” one source said.

It was claimed the former provincial administration had decided to barter the land as it was unable to settle the hotel debt, which reportedly ran into millions.

A similar situation exists over land on the outskirts of Gizo where tsunami survivors are living in shelters.

Reports had it that the land, owned by the Forestry department, had been sold to an Asian logging company by the immediate past former Western provincial administration. The same land is being earmarked for the Western Province’s new prison.

“Regardless of who owns this tract of land, the tsunami survivors are defiant and are building their houses here. They are too scared to return to their seaside villages,” the guide told me.

We turned and headed back into town.

In Honiara, the National Disaster Council (NDC) appears to know little about what is going on in terms of rehabilitation work and how much money has come in by way of donations.

A sub-committee, headed by the Permanent Secretary of Finance, Luma Darcy, is in charge of the finance. The subcommittee has taken over the rehabilitation work.

As for its own record, the NDC produced a printout showing funds donated through it, totalling a mere S$1.184 million.

Donation records: According to NDC’s Julian Makaa, the organisation does not keep records of donations made directly through the Office of the Prime Minister or those made through non-government  organisations.

“The Office of the Prime Minister does not forward any funds donated for the tsunami rehabilitation work through us,” Makaa said.

Examples of tsunami donations going directly to the Office of the Prime Minister included the S$3 million given by Taiwan and the other is a US$250,000 cash donation by the United States Government which went through World Vision, a US-registered NGO.

Published reports suggest the government has in its coffers S$15 million in donations for the tsunami rehabilitation work. It is seeking an extra S$25 million.

Reports that cabinet has decided to give the funds through MPs representing the areas devastated by the tsunami have infuriated the Premier of Western Province, Alex Lokopio.

Lokopio was in Honiara in October when he was assured the S$15 million for the rehabilitation work was intact.

What he may never be told is that with the Government’s Bottom-up Approach (BUA) policy in tatters, the money could easily be diverted to salvage the much-publicised BUA in Western Province, while expecting Taiwan to replenish government coffers.