Malaysia Sun: Malaysia: Monday,
March 06, 2017.
BATAWALA, SRI
LANKA - M.V. Manjula stands near a barbed wire fence and points beyond it.
"All
this land that you can see used to belong to us, 151 perches of land, almost an
acre," Manjula, 50, says. "And it was covered in fertile rubber trees
that we used to tap twice a day for as far back as I can remember."
Today the
rubber trees are gone. The red earth remains, flattened by bulldozers. Beyond
the fence, several cement structures, built by the state-owned Ceylon
Electricity Board, are the beginnings of what is slated to become the Padukka
Grid Substation.
Manjula's
family, who earned around 70,000 rupees ($462) per month from the rubber latex,
lost their income from the land overnight. Manjula says that in September 2014,
she and her neighbors were informed at a hastily called meeting that the
government would take over the land, and despite protests, the state claimed it
on Nov. 7, 2014, under powers of the Land Acquisition Act.
"We
didn't know what land we were losing until they came to mark off the land that
had been taken for the project," Manjula says.
INSIDE THE
STORY: GPJ reporter Manori Wijesekera considers the potential of Sri Lanka's
new Right to Information Act to produce a cultural shift.
Manjula's
family has been offered 50,000 rupees ($333) per perch as compensation by the
government, but Manjula says this is far less than the value of the 100,000
rupees ($666) to 125,000 rupees ($832) a perch it is worth. Besides, she says,
the offer doesn't include value of the rubber trees or their income loss from
tapping the trees.
And, she
continues, three years after the government claimed the land, the community
still doesn't understand the extent of the project.
"We have
no clear information about anything," Manjula says. "What are they
building here? How will it affect the electricity supply in our village and
homes? What are the possible health or other risks to us? What is the damage to
the environment? We know nothing!"
Manjula plans
to use Sri Lanka's new Right to Information (RTI) Act to find out more about
the power station in her backyard and the decision-making process that led to
acquiring the land.
The law took
effect Feb. 3, and with it Sri Lanka became the 108th country that provides a
way for citizens to demand information from the government. Signed into law on
Aug. 4, 2016, it's being hailed as one of the most extensive freedom of
information acts in the world.
"If we
had this law in 2014, we could have asked for documents about this project,
like the official valuation report, from the local government office or from
the village government officer," Manjula says.
Hemantha
Withanage, executive director of the Centre for Environmental Justice, says the
RTI will help citizens, like Manjula, to access information without having to
go through the expensive and time-consuming process of taking legal action.
"We have
only been able to get access to government documents after filing legal action
in courts, and the documents are only released to us, sometimes partially,
after the court forces them to do so," he says.
Withanage
says the Centre for Environmental Justice plans to submit RTI requests on two
large projects both involving Chinese investment: the Colombo International
Financial City project and the Sri Lanka-China Industrial Zone in Hambantota.
"Information
can be a powerful tool," he says. "There are so many projects and
industries that are being planned or implemented that will have major
environmental consequences for which we don't have any information right
now."
S. G.
Punchihewa, one of five commissioners in the RTI Commission - an independent
commission set up to create RTI standards and regulations, as well as being the
law's appellate body - encourages Sri Lankans to use the law.
"People
are used to a certain culture of being denied information, and it is ingrained
in them to not ask for information," he says.
T.D. Chala
Nona, 80, mother of M.V. Manjula, looks out over their Batawala, Padukka, home
in Sri Lanka. Their property used to include a rubber plantation that Chala
Nona had tapped rubber from since she was a teenager, but was demolished to
build a power grid station. The family says it will use Sri Lanka's new Right
to Information law to access the decision-making process that led the
government to acquire the land.
Manori
Wijesekera, GPJ Sri Lanka
Piyatissa
Ranasinghe, RTI consultant to the Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass
Media - the agency responsible for ensuring implementation of the law - says
state agencies welcome requests for information and are proactive in disclosing
information.
"Government
officials are willing to do it," he says, in a phone interview.
But answering
requests for information isn't always easy, Ranasinghe says.
The biggest
challenge he sees is that a large part of government information and
documentation is not digitized, but should be within five years. "Some of
our recording systems go back 150 years," Ranasinghe says. "It is all
there, but it's not easily accessed."
Government
officials' attitudes about releasing information could be another challenge,
Punchihewa warns. "Government [officials are] used to thinking that they
will make the decisions, and the citizens will have to support it," he
says. "It should be otherwise. The citizens will create the systems of
government, to be used for themselves."
Withanage
says that based on his experience in working with local communities on
environmental campaigns, he questions whether local communities will have the
confidence and ability to deal with powerful government agencies.
"Local
people are interested when it comes to their local issues but only a few people
have the capacity to deal with government and the bureaucracy," he says.
Sri
Lankans Use New RTI Law to Access
Land
Information Following War in North
A recent
silent protest in front of the president's office in Colombo was part of an
effort to use the new Right to Information law to get the facts on missing
persons, voter identification, land rights and other issues. A youth network
called AFRIEL facilitated the demonstration and has assisted people in
developing more than 1,000 applications under the law. Read the story.
Ranasinghe
disagrees, saying the government has carried out training programs for all
ministries, departments and agencies at national, provincial and district
levels. "I think the public administrative systems will be more participatory
and there will be deeper integration and they will eventually work more
efficiently," he says. "They know they will be held accountable. I
think most of them are ready now, and they want this."
Civil society
organizations like Transparency International Sri Lanka and Deshodaya say they
will monitor implementation of the RTI Act, and continue to create awareness
among citizens to encourage them to use it as a tool for more participatory
governance.
"We are
very hopeful of this law creating more openness in government," Gunaratne
says.
Punchihewa
says the RTI Commission will also be closely monitoring and supervising the RTI
process as it rolls out.
"With
this Act, I think people will understand what democracy is," Punchihewa
says. "Democracy is not other people giving us something; we should
acquire it by way of using our rights and possibilities."
The RTI act
can create a more empowered Sri Lankan citizen, Punchihewa says. And that would
be transformational for the country, he says.
"It is
citizens who create the government, and a country is changed only by
citizens," he says. "To do that they need to have both the knowledge
and the practice of their rights. For the practice of rights, this law and its
implementation are going to be very vital."
Manori
Wijesekera, GPJ, translated two interviews from Sinhala.
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