Post Tsunami mitigation and rehabilitation work in Katugoda village

Abstract

On 26ᵗʰ December, 2004, the Tsunami occurred at Katugoda area killing more than 300,000 all over the world and, also, around 35,000 people in Sri Lanka. It also damaged every aspect of the environment as well, just wiping out them almost all by couple of waves. Katugoda is situated in Galle District within Galle-Four Gravets Division. There were 713 families and 3477 people. It is the most affected division out of 50 Grama Niladari divisions in Galle-Four-Gravets Divisional Secretariat Division in the Galle District. The height of the waves at Katugoda averaged 6 meters and had wiped off the coastal line of Katugoda and the Southern part of Galle District too. The lack of knowledge of the community about tsunami caused large number of damages. According to the statistics available, above DS division 774 were killed and 143 were missing. Injuries recorded were 1211. Out of them, there were 252 deaths and 750 injured in Katugoda Division. 712 families were displaced. The damages to properties were very high. This shows the magnitude and the degree of the destruction compared with other villages in the division. Soon after the unfortunate event, it was heartening to see that number of Government and non government Organizations have come to the scene and started their rehabilitation and mitigation work soon. But the people of the area have got totally dissatisfied and expressed their grievances relates to these post tsunami rehabilitation and mitigation activities. Even though severely occurred tsunami had cause considerable damaged to the division, it is seems that have not been perfectly done Rehabilitation and Mitigation activities. In this research, the researcher tried to find the government Rehabilitation and Mitigation mechanisms were success as they expected. There are many activities that have already been done. But still there are many activities which have to be done for those people affected by tsunami. This thesis bears the utilization of government, Non Governmental Organizations and other organizations within the rehabilitation and mitigation processes in Katugoda, by focusing on government official information. The objective of this research was found out the Rehabilitation and Mitigation works which have done by government and Non Governmental Organization were success. For this purpose, identify the nature of the impact of the tsunami, its possible consequences and required mitigation and rehabilitation measures to get them back. Assess the successfulness of government and non government organizations activities on mitigations and rehabilitations. It was the researcher task to see the works done by the above organizations were actually done according to the requirements of the affected people. There after, made conclusion and formulated recommendations based on the out come of the aforesaid activities.