Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Rajan Philips-December
12, 2015
It looks more like
capitulation than
compromise. Rather than
downsizing Port City as a compromise, let alone scrapping it as it vowed it
would in the now-forgotten 100-Day Program, the government has all but
approved the restarting of the suspended project at its bloated 450+/hectares off-shore footprint. News of the approval appeared almost
simultaneously in Beijing and in Colombo. The Chinese authorities are
pleased, and the Sri Lankan government has spelt out the next steps in
the approval process. Before long contractors will resume dredging,
blasting and digging operations in the Gampaha District that would
ultimately remove nearly 70 million cubic meters of sand and rock
(equivalent to: one mile by one mile by 85 feet deep hole) and dump it offshore across from the Galle Face Green. What Prime Minister
Wickremesinghe deadpanned as "few landfills" is a massive dig and fill
operation undertaken in one fell swoop, but for the interruption following
the January 8 election.
This is rape of nature, and nature will unleash its fury in one form or
another. For now, the monsoons are having fun in Colombo while
devastating Chennai and Tamil Nadu. A few showers are enough to
inundate Colombos streets and make it look like Venice in a flash. While
Singapore planners are labouring to create the outlines for a future
megapolis in Colombo, the rain gods are turning it into a mega-flood-polis,
as Lucien Rajakarunanayake inimitably lampooned in yesterdays Island.
The impacts to marine life, the shoreline, and the dredged and excavated
areas in the Gampaha District should be of huge concern. Those who
highlighted these issues during the presidential election have now gone
quiet under cover of their new ministerial portfolios.
introducing the ALS, Singapore completed the first phase of its Mass Rapid
Transit (MRT) system. Today, Singapore has one of the most state-of-theart, efficient, reliable and convenient public transportation systems in the
world. A key component of Singapores transport policy is the
discouragement of private car travel especially from home to work and
back. The imposition of high car registration fees and other disincentives
are not a budgetary exercise but components of a transport policy regime.
It is one thing to develop a Megapolis Plan using Singaporean planners,
but it is quite a different and more difficult matter to introduce and
implement a public transportation system in the Western Megapolis.
Implementing individual Megapolis development projects, without first
launching a public transportation system will only lead to traffic congestion
and gridlock. A first step would be to identify the agency who will be
responsible for transportation in the Western Megapolis. Who will it be?
The new Ministry of Western Megapolis? The Ministry of Transportation?
The UDA? The Western Provincial Government? The Colombo Municipality
or other municipal and local bodies in the Western Province? Singapore is
an island City State, 100 times smaller than Sri Lanka, where national
governance and municipal governance are virtually congruent. Not so in
Sri Lanka, and not even in the Western Province. According to Provincial
Chief Ministers, the governments new budget did not make any allocations
for the Provinces. Will the new Megapolis Ministry smother over the
existing provincial and local government institutions in the Western
Province? What will be their role, if any, in the unfolding of the new
Megapolis?
Another key area where the Jayewardene and later Premadasa
governments failed to learn from Singapore, while emulating its open
economy, was in the area of housing. Publicly provided, privately owned
housing is another key component of Singapores economic success story.
As an entrept economy from British times, housing has been a constant
problem in Singapore. From its inception in 1959, the Peoples Action Party
government set out to address this problem in a creative way. The Housing
and Development Board (no private developer) took over the business of
planning and building public housing, not for renting but ownership.
Homeownership was not merely facilitated but enforced by directing
employees to draw from the Central Provident Fund to pay their down
payment. What began as low cost, low income housing development later
evolved into upscale condominiums, but all under the auspices of the HDB.
Of course, there is a private housing market in Singapore, but the PAP
government knew that market by itself could not solve Singapores housing