COLOMBO: Sri Lanka on Tuesday confirmed that tons of aid for stricken tsunami survivors had been stranded at the country’s main port here after import duties were reintroduced. About 200 shipping containers of old clothes and bottled water would soon be cleared for distribution to make room at the terminal, social services ministry spokesman W.M.S. Wijekoon said.

Tax and port duties for aid imports were reintroduced last week, four months after the December disaster which killed nearly 31,000 people here. “Aid coming in now is subject to normal taxes, but if it is given to us for distribution, we can take over the responsibility of paying the necessary customs and port charges,” ministry spokesman W.M.S. Wijekoon said.

“But, in most cases, the charges that we are expected to pay (to customs and the port) are not worth the contents. They are usually old clothes or date-expired bottled drinking water.”

Australian charities have expressed outrage at the situation.

“I’m just so angry,” Chris O’Dempsey, director and founder of Heart Reach Australia, told Tuesday’s The Australian newspaper.

“I’ve been involved in sending containers of supplies around the world for a long time now, and I’ve seen the difference it can make to people’s lives,” said O’Dempsey, who described seeing hundreds of containers sitting at the terminal.—AFP