UNDP & Tsunami Recovery

Maldives fishermen now harvesting tsunami driftwood

31 May 2005, Dhiggaru, Maldives: Hussein Moosa used to be a fisherman on Dhiggaru, a remote island in the Maldives. For 27 years, he fished to feed his family but now, the wily 48-year-old now makes a precarious living wielding a chainsaw.

Mr. Moosa spends his days collecting and chopping up Indonesian hardwood, which was dragged out to sea when the tsunami struck on 26 December last year. The timber is now beginning to float ashore in other countries across the region, posing a hazard for the speedboats that ply the waters of the Maldives, but also offering a possible source of income and building materials for the thousands of fishermen and their families who have lost boats and fishing gear.

“I have eight kids to feed,” he says. “My wife used to make a living processing the fish that I caught at home. Now I have no boat, no income, and she has nothing to do all day. These logs are a blessing because they offer us a way to make money, although it is still one third of what I earned before.”

The hardwood, which would fetch hundreds of dollars per cubic metre in western countries, is being sawed into planks for use in boats and to fix houses on the island of 1,200, where 14 families are still displaced from the tsunami.

The UN Development Programme, using money from the Bush/Clinton Foundation is set to bring over US$ 1 million worth of aid to the remote island, which is 760 km from Colombo and 118 km from the small island nation’s capital of Male’. Thirty-five houses will be rebuilt, over 100 will be repaired and eventually, boats and fishing equipment will be replaced, along with other livelihoods washed away by the tsunami.

But in the meantime, Mr. Moosa’s boat sits on the beach with its deck and mast broken, and its hull smashed. Like many on the island who lost boats, Mr. Moosa can’t afford the cost of repairs. Like all the people on Dhiggaru, he waits for help, but not passively.

“The people on this island do not want to sit back and do nothing. We are self-reliant,” says Abdula Mufeed, the island’s chief. “Many people are living in damaged houses and have just gotten on with their own repairs. Everyone also helped build a temporary retaining wall to stop the erosion caused by the tsunami.”

According to Mr. Mufeed, most of the boats on the island were damaged. Most of the lost equipment hasn’t been replaced. The economic impact is severe. He estimates that island income is down by 70 percent on average. It is a typical picture in the Maldives, which lost US$ 472 million from the tsunami – equal to about 62 percent of the country’s GDP.

“People are very poor when compared to before the tsunami,” he said. “You can see the discomfort on people’s faces.”

For Mr. Moosa, working with a chainsaw causes pain in his back. “I’m getting too old for this work. Fishing was much easier, and paid better,” he says.