|
|
|
Thursday, December 23, 2010 - 8.30 GMT |
|
North projects
on track:
No dispute over standard of ‘housing units’
- S. B. Divaratne |
|
|
|
The country can be justly proud of progress in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of former battle-fields, said S. B. Divaratne; a senior official involved in re-building the war devastated Northern Province. Citing newest data available from State agencies and INGOs/NGOs, Divaratne asserts that their efforts are on track, though some may not want to accept or agree.
In an interview with The Island, Divaratne, Secretary to the Presidential Task Force for Resettlement Development and Security (Northern Province), said that house building projects launched by the governments of Sri Lanka and India, and INGOs, including the EU and UN would help the country to tackle a key problem in the post-war era.
Divaratne dismissed assertion that some IDPs had questioned the standards of housing units offered by the government and other agencies following India’s offer to build 50,000 houses for the affected families. He said that there couldn’t be any basis for IDPs to refuse what they had been offered by the government or other donors.
Divaratne was responding to a statement issued by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which dealt with a range of issues, including a dispute over the standard of the newly built housing units in the North.
Divaratne said that when the LTTE was defeated, some had alleged that the government intended to hold the war displaced in detention camps indefinitely. He said they had gone so far as to accuse the government of detaining ex-LTTE cadres in bases similar to Nazi death camps in Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1940s.
Responding to a query, Divaratne, who functioned as the Commissioner General of Essential Services at the height of the war, said that today ‘those liars’ had been exposed. "We haven’t not only opened IDP facilities, but also rehabilitated and released a substantial number of ex-combatants," the official said.
The EU had, Divaratne said, launched a major house building project in the Vavuniya District since the end of the conflict. According to him, the EU had already completed about 500 housing units. UN-HABITAT, SLRC, UNOPS and other agencies had launched important projects in the Northern Province, he said, emphasizing the need to complete work as early as possible.
Divaratne said that the under the government’s own North East Housing Reconstruction Project 11,490 units would be built in the Northern Province.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contact Information:: Send
mail to