Clans Turn to Fishing Fleet

Today was the day of the big "coordination meeting." As I've mentioned before, the aid business is divided into competing clans, all ostensibly working toward the same noble end, but with different agendas and philosophies. It would take a sociologist to adequately analyze all the groups and sub-groups operating here, but the two main clans are clear enough.

On one side of the divide are the NGOs, aid worker parlance for nongovernmental organizations, professional relief agencies such as Save the Children and CARE. On the other are a vast host of amateurs, ranging from private individuals who simply showed up here after the tsunami to businessmen with long-standing ties to the local community.

After circling each other warily for the last few weeks, the two clans met this morning in the district capital of Matara to try to bring some order to the chaotic process of resurrecting the tsunami-damaged fishing fleet. A cadre of government officials and local fisheries inspectors served as bemused referees.

It soon became clear that the amateurs are much more impatient than the professionals. They want immediate action to relieve the suffering they see around them. Their first instinct is to rush in. The first instinct of many NGOs, by contrast, is to stand back and write another report.

Both approaches have their virtues and their flaws, so I don't want to say definitively that one approach is superior to the other. There are effective -- and ineffective -- people on both sides of the divide. But here's a fly-on-the-wall summary of the debate.

Amateur aid worker: We have to get the fishing boats back to sea again. The fishing season ends in April, and time is running out. People are getting desperate.

Professional aid worker: We have enough money to pay for 1,000 new boats, but we have to consider what effect this will have on the overall economy. Overfishing is already a serious problem.

Amateur: We need more information from the fisheries inspectors to do our work. We have to do our own detective work to find out who deserves boats and who doesn't. People are hiding engines inside their houses and then claiming new engines from us.

Professional: This is our first meeting. The inspectors are doing their best.

Amateur: We are running into problems of duplication. Some fishermen are claiming new boats from different donors. In order to stop this, we need much more complete information about what was lost in the tsunami.

Professional: Should we be putting rich people's boats back into the water? Can't these richer fishermen simply go to the bank and get credit?

Another fisheries coordination meeting is planned for sometime next month. . . .

-- Michael Dobbs

By washingtonpost.com |  February 15, 2005; 12:30 PM ET  | Category:  Michael Dobbs
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