The period between 2010 - 2015, post war urban development in Colombo and the Urban Development Authority will be remembered for the forced evictions, the military harassment and threats to the urban poor to leave their homes, lack of due process, the State propaganda machine convincing everyone that the relocations to the UDA built high-rises in North Colombo would uplift the lives of the ‘slum and shanty dwellers’. In fact, the majority did not even fall into that category and had permanent houses spanning several floors, many had deeds and were not compensated for their loss and all of this was topped off by the one million rupees every household is made to pay for their new apartment.
2015 - 2016 saw the UDA delinked from the Ministry of Defence and brought under the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development. However to date, several military personnel in civilian clothing continue to hold positions and carry out key functions of the institution. It is with great disappointment that those of us who engaged positively with the UDA in the early years of Yahapalanaya see that the institution continue displacing and relocating people, with no review of the process so far. The Urban Regeneration Project has ironically become a creator of vertical slums, inhabitable spaces and places where drugs and crime are rampant - all the very things it promised to eliminate through relocation. Communities who were promised housing following their Supreme Court cases - Station Passage in 2013 and Java Lane in 2014 are still waiting for their new homes which should have been completed years ago.
Military governance
In March this year we met with a woman living in one of the UDA apartment complexes where for over an hour she recounted her interaction with the head of the Urban Regeneration Project earlier that week - a military brigadier who led the evictions in Colombo until 2014 and continues in his role as project director. It was a day long interaction where she followed the Brigadier around the UDA all day, begging and pleading with him not to disconnect the water supply in her apartment. Her humiliating experience was difficult to listen to, but is a common grievance when it comes to dealings with the particular officer.
The absurdly high water bills that residents started receiving since they moved into the Dematagoda high-rises in 2014 has been raised before with various authorities. Some residents receive water bills as high as Rs 10,000 in a single month. I was present at a meeting at the UDA in 2015 where this issue was raised and a technical officer admitted to the fact that there was a fault with the water meters and the way the bills were generated (utility bills are actually issued by the UDA and not the electricity and water board). Most households stopped paying the water bills because they simply could not afford to and clearly there was something wrong. A few years down the line, the problem persists and the UDA’s way of coercing people to pay the bills without actually fixing the problem has been to disconnect water supply of individual apartments. The woman who was telling us her story has an accumulated water bill of over Rs 100,000 - this in a household that does not even have a washing machine. She was deeply troubled and stressed about her situation and said that she had in desperation offered to try and make the payments in installments - which the military officer allegedly refused. She asked us how on earth they would manage to go about their daily life without water - they were already in debt, having borrowed money to make the initial Rs 100,000 compulsory payment to move into the apartment while working as daily wage earners.
The Centre for Policy Alternatives stated in a 2017 report, “By training, discipline and competence, the military lack the skills and mindset required of a civilian administrator. The influence of the military has undermined the transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the UDA as a civilian institution to the needs of affected families. It has also negatively influenced the conduct of civilian public officers who for nearly half a decade have grown accustomed to dealing with citizens, emboldened by the political and military might of the Ministry of Defence.”
“This is the best we can do” method of function
The UDA is facing an identity crisis - on one hand it seems incapable of understanding basic civilised interaction, human dignity and respect, and the importance of due process, whether it is at a project conceptualising and planning stage or when dealing with the thousands of families living in the apartment complexes. On the other hand, this is the same institution that for some relocations, sometimes took up to a year working with the affected communities incorporating their needs and ideas and reaching consensus, drafted official documents and agreements in all three languages and making copies available to the communities after they had signed it - only after the community was in complete agreement with all the clauses. We see some much needed changes in the design of the newer apartment complexes as well - for example apartments placed right around a courtyard where there is more sunlight coming in irrespective of the floor, and fewer long corridors. Why is that the institution demonstrates a humane approach for some things, and yet does the complete opposite for others?
Welcome news
In May 2018, a meeting was called by the UDA at one apartment complex, informing residents that deeds were going to be handed over. This was welcome news for the residents, who had been living in the apartment complex for over four years with only a single page allotment letter as their sole documentation for their residence. What it actually turned out to be was not a deed but a housing agreement that no one had seen or read before, a four page detailed document outlining the responsibility of the apartment dweller. Parts of it was not even in line with condominium law and practice in Sri Lanka. The document was only available in Sinhala - and the community this document was presented to was a Tamil community. Residents were not given the opportunity to read it, see what the contents were or even consult a lawyer. They were shown the last page of the document, asked to sign and leave. When it was pointed out to the UDA officials that the people had a constitutional right to official communication and documents in the Tamil language - the officials got defensive and informed the community that it was a housing agreement for their benefit. When asked for an explanation of the contents, the officials allegedly retorted that it could take hours. By now a few residents had already signed and left, and this interaction would not have happened if some people had not started objecting to the fact that they could not read Sinhala. The attitude of the officials during this entire exchange was reportedly unpleasant and unproductive. It was a week day and most residents had skipped work that day because of this meeting, a continuing feature of the UDA process that sees no problem asking communities with a significant proportion of daily wage earners to come for meetings on weekdays, with no alternatives being offered.
Harassed and coerced
Getting people to sign officials documents without any explanation of the content or have it available in Sinhala and Tamil, with no copy of the document given to them after signing is everyday practice at the UDA. This is not the first time the UDA has done this and has been the mode of conduct over the last few years. Officials have harassed and coerced people into signing documents with threats of seizing apartments or withholding shop space allocated to them, while ignoring maintenance breakdowns including of lifts for weeks as a punishment for not paying rent on time.
In an interview with Ceylon Today last week, a project director of the UDA was quoted saying “We need to realise that Colombo is a very small city, but we also can’t move these people out of the city either since they provide a lot of services. These houses are also closely packed and wall to wall, so, they can’t easily be upgraded either. So, this is the best we can do”. This statement is extremely revealing of the UDA’s inability to understand how space is constructed - both in the public and private sphere. How we create and use space is different based on our needs, culture, financial means, individual preferences. When the city is full of hoardings that promises luxurious lifestyles for Colombo and apartments that are “more than an address” or “an ode to the best things in life”, why isn’t that same luxury afforded to the urban poor? Why don’t they get a say in where they live, what their homes look like and how they choose to use and create space?
Furthermore, the rights of the urban poor being seen in relation to the “services” they provide to the city is also problematic, and a complete misconception of the urban poor of Colombo and the aspirations of the younger generation. By seeing the value of affected communities only because “they are the backbone of the city” distorts the idea of a citizen. People should not have to demonstrate their productivity and usefulness to a city to be afforded their rights. Affected communities have lived in Colombo for generations and like the rest of the country, their identity and sense of belonging is intrinsically linked with the land.
The UDA and Megapolis Ministry must ensure that spatial justice is the cornerstone of every development planning process. Tasked with transforming Colombo into a “world class city”, how planners and project officials understand those who live, work and visit the city, how to meet the needs and aspirations of all the diverse groups and communities of Colombo - while tackling issues of growing urban populations, climate change, land scarcity is no easy feat. Understanding rights and due process is fundamental for this to be a just and equitable process. This requires a multi disciplinary approach that puts the citizens at the centre of the planning process and cannot be a one day workshop or presentation of power-point slides. The institution needs a serious transformation where it becomes one that is humane and ensures that no one is left behind in the development process.
(The writer is an independent researcher and curator of the ‘Right to the city Sri Lanka’ initiative (http://righttothecity.info). She was previously a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA).