<b>Batticaloa Market Flooded with Upcountry Vegetables</b>

From Guna Kajananth in Batticoloa. July 18: The impact of the opening of the Chenkalady- Badulla (A5) road is felt here almost immediately. Batticaloa market is flooded with farm fresh, upcountry vegetables and prices of rice and fish has begun to shoot up.
Vegetable wholesaler Shanmugam Periyasamy said: Five to six lorries have come with vegetables and their price has declined.

Stalls were full of fresh green leeks, cabbage and beans and the newly dug carrots and beetroot, tempting housewives who were long used to limp, wilted vegetables, to grab them. A stall holder Visu said that the sale of upcountry vegetables had soared.

Jak fruits, a rarity in the eastern province, were aplenty in the Batticoloa market. Two lorry loads have come from Monaragala.

While prices of vegetables dropped, local products, especially rice and fish picked up. They are now sent to the hill country.

Rice trader Mohammed Ali said that 15 lorry loads of rice were sent to Badulla and added the number would increase. Batticoloa- Ampara region is Sri Lanka’s rice bowel.

Six lorries carried fish and fish mudalais here hope to feed the distributors of the south-eastern quarter of the central hills, with the fresh catch from the east. Fishing, which was earlier, severely restricted due to the security situation, is now easing and gradually expanding.

“The opening of A5 has already benefited the people of all three communities living in the Eastern and Uva provinces. Traditionally their economy is interdependent. With the ceasefire, the pre-war situation is crawling back, Planning Ministry’s consultant Alishahir Mowlana said.

Opening of the road had brought a sense of relief among the inhabitants of the border villages. A group of Sinhala youths from a border village joyfully cycled to Batticaloa, on a sight seeing trip.

“We have never been to Batticaloa before. Our parents used to relate us of the happy days of yore, when they spent evenings frolicking on the beach. Some of us have not seen the ocean,” Sarath Silva, a GCE AL student said.

Life in the border villages too had improved, he said.

“The days in which we lived in dread of LTTE attacks are over,” Sarath’s friend Prasanna said.