LTTE plans 'tsunami wall' along coast

Jayalalithaa and Prabhakaran are planning a tsunami wall, writes PK Balachanddran. HT Relief Fund

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and LTTE Supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran seem to have at least one thing in common - both are planning to build a wall along the coast as the first line of defence against the dreaded tsunami.

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But there is a critical difference between the "Amma of Tamil Nadu" and the "Annan of a Tamil Eelam" in this matter.

While Jayalalithaa has proposed a multi-crore concrete wall which will disfigure the entire Tamil Nadu coastline and pose a new threat to the people living by its side, Prabhakaran is planning a more pleasing, eco-friendly, a much shorter and inexpensive earth wall, more like a bund around irrigation tanks in India and Sri Lanka.

The LTTE's mud and clay bund will be constructed over a six kilometre stretch in Mullaitivu district, an area in North East Sri Lanka which is under the de facto control of the LTTE and which houses its military headquarters.

"The bund, to be constructed 200 metres from the shore, will be three metres in height and two metres in width," said V Sivanadiyar, president of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO), in Mullaitivu district.

TRO is linked closely to the LTTE, but is also an officially registered NGO in Sri Lanka.

"An earth bund is safer than a concrete wall," Sivanadiyar told Hindustan Times at the Planning Development Secretariat of the LTTE in Mullaitivu town on Tuesday.

"The second line of defence will be trees with deep roots like coconut palms. Mangroves will be grown too," he added.

It was thanks to the mangrove forests that vast stretches of the Thanjavur coastline in Tamil Nadu had escaped the fury of the tsunami on December 26. Vast areas of the south western coastline of Sri Lanka would also have escaped the onslaught of the killer waves if only the Sri Lankan authorities had heeded the pleas of the renowned science writer, Sir Arthur Clarke, and prevented the destruction of the mangroves along the coast.