Amantha Perera visits the white
elephants of the Deep South
It is one of the hottest days of the year, and the security guards don’t bother to come out of their small office by the entrance; they wave us through, like waving off pesky flies. There’s a 10-foot-wide entrance, while the rest of the 40-foot-entrance is blocked by a pullout fence. The brightly coloured bougainvillea is overgrown.
The moment we pass the entrance, a gigantic rusting peacock stares down at us. It is huge, maybe 20 feet tall, and is in need of a paint job. The rusting metal and overgrown and unkempt flowerbeds make the surroundings look like something out of a 1970s Mad Max movie.
No, we are not in the fiction land of some book by the great Gabriel García Márquez, though parts from The Autumn of the Patriarch seem so apt. We have just entered the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, aka MRIA.
ALIEN CONTRAPTION The airport cost US$ 210 million to build. It sits like an alien contraption amidst the wilderness of the Hambantota landscape. Commissioned in March 2013, the complex covers an amazing 2,000 hectares, and is beautifully designed. The interior is homely and boasts floor-to-ceiling windows which allow the sunlight to gush in, unlike the dark corridors that welcome you into the belly of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA), where there is a feeling of being sucked into a vacuum cleaner.
Indeed, the airport means so many things to so many people. To former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom I met before my trek to the airport, it is a significant achievement of his drive to modernise what was not so long ago the underdeveloped backwaters of the island’s south.
To those who took over the reins of the country from him, it is nothing more than one of many vanity projects. “What do we do with this? What do we with all of these projects that have come up in Hambantota?” an exasperated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe asked, the day before I took off to Hambantota.
PROJECT GRANDEUR There is no doubt that these were grand projects. The airport is linked to the main Kataragama Road by a 30-kilometre highway with four perfectly laid out lanes. I remember touring the area when these projects were under construction, and also being at the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Stadium when it was nearing completion – then, I saw a lone wild elephant staring at the structure from the nearby scrub jungle. It looked as confused as I was, staring at the high concrete walls that were being built.
I was also present when the new Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port, in Hambantota, was commissioned. Yes, I watched the dancers – and there were hundreds of them, a ship that had been remodelled after ancient lore and the dominating symbol of the peacock.
But grandeur aside, have these projects delivered on their promise?
‘No’ seems to be the reverberating answer.
DESERTED DEEP SOUTH As we drove to the airport, along deserted roads, our van crossed motorcyclists (sans helmets) literally dashing in the opposite direction. They would suddenly appear over the horizon, like moths heading straight at us.
My driver is more used to the ‘sneaking-in-and-out’ traffic chaos in Colombo, so he was aghast. Here, in the Deep South, he was completely out of his comfort zone, driving on a wide road with no one but himself on it… and suddenly, there is a motorcyclist heading straight at him!
“Where are we?” he exclaimed. I had to calm him down, and tell him that we were on our way to the airport. He did get the unintended joke. “Ah! That is why these guys want to fly,” he said, laughing.
For the record, the suicidal motorcyclists were being practical. There is hardly any traffic on this road, where the centre island runs for miles without a break, so they take the easy option and ride on whichever side they enter. They would have been equally surprised to see a shiny, blue van on the road, as we were to see them.
The airport was deserted. When we arrived, five people were outside the entrance – two security guards and three cleaning personnel. Only our vehicle was in the car park. We were allowed to walk in without any fuss.
There were no travellers in the spanking new airport. All the booths were empty, except for the information desk and money exchange booth.
TIME STANDS STILL The amiable young lady at the information booth told me that on that day there had been seven arrivals, which was quite a leap from the day before, when no one had used the airport. In the last 72 hours, she tells me there had been 10 arrivals and four departures. There was only one flight – flydubai, which was extending its contract on a monthly basis, and indicated that it too was stopping flights.
A family had come to visit the airport. They were taking pictures everywhere, as if this was a museum. “Those days, lots of people came to see the airport. We even allowed visitors to go near the boarding areas. Now, very few come here; people think this is going to be closed down,” the information officer told me, despondently.
She said that soon after the new airport opened, thousands of schoolchildren would come on educational tours. “Now, no one comes,” she repeats. But she tells me that the airport’s information desk is manned 24/7, though for whose benefit she did not know.
It was surreal walking inside the airport. I have probably been through more than 100 airports, from bustling international hubs like Heathrow, to little known Biratnagar, in Nepal. This was the first airport where I saw a flight schedule showing arrivals and departures that were 24 hours away – and hence, everyone walked about as if they were taking happy midday strolls.
It was a miracle that we did not see anyone asleep anywhere – maybe because the air conditioning was off, or running low. But nobody was taking a step in a hurry. It was as if time stood still at MRIA.
SUPERIOR FACILITY On the other hand, MRIA is far superior to BIA. The clear windows, a high wooden ceiling and open spaces gives it a homely look. If only there were a few people around, the ghostly feeling would have disappeared. It must also be the quietest airport ever built… I could hear my own footsteps!
When these projects came off the drawing board and on to the dusty plains of Hambantota, they were part and parcel of a larger grand design. The only significant real estate on the way to the airport is the eight-storey hospital which is under construction, a new administrative complex and the Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa International Convention Centre.
The latter rises out of the scrub jungle like a shiny behemoth scanning the horizon. There’s no one near the gates…. we could have walked all the way in, and ended up being the only visitors.
POTENTIAL FTZ OR HUB? What can be done with these projects is the vexed question for those who replaced the Rajapaksa administration. A Cabinet Minister told me soon after the new Government took office that Hambantota could be turned into a Free Trade Zone (FTZ). This makes sense, since the infrastructure is in place.
But an FTZ needs industry – something that the planners of these grand projects seem to have overlooked, ignored or simply left for another day. Setting up industry here will take a major effort, and call for substantial funds and heaps of time.
There was a rumour that the visiting Emir of Qatar had expressed an interest in using Mattala as a service hub for Qatar Airways. That is an option that had reportedly been considered even by the Rajapaksa government. And there were public announcements by the then management of SriLankan Airlines, that German carrier Lufthansa was considering using Mattala as a service hub. However, even though these claims were made, nothing worked out.
But something has to be done here, before these investments end up being massive black holes of public funds. No one seems to have given much thought to what must be done. It will probably take a more stable government to make such calls.
Till then, MRIA will remain the worst example of self-aggrandisement taking precedence over national needs.
