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Monday, October 10, 2005
Permanent housing, assistance for livelihood haunt tsunami hit
Thiruvananthapuram: Ten months after the killer Tsunami struck the Sri Lankan coast, the demand for permanent housing, financial and technical assistance to begin a livelihood are the major concerns haunting the survivors in that Island nation.
The December 26 Tsunami survivors living in rehabilitation camps and temporary shelters are perplexed about where they would have their lands and how would they begin a new a livelihood.
These sentiments were echoed by Geeta Galappatty, Atrh, Ramana and Mohammed Rasmi representing various NGOs from the Island nation who were on a visit to the Kerala Capital this week to participate in an international workshop on rebuilding sustainable livelihood of the Tsunami affected people in South Asia and South East Asia.
''The Lankan Government has imposed buffer zones of 100 mts and 200 mts from the coastline in the north and eastern coastal region.
No construction is allowed in this area. It is very difficult to find land. There is a huge demand for land,'' Rasmi who is associated with the relief works in Amparai district said.
There is a need for resolving land allocation policies to enable construction of permanent houses, he says.
Galappatty of the People Rural Development Association also expressed the same view saying, ''the people out in the temporary shelters and in rehabilitation camps are not aware where their houses are going to be. They also fear if they will be able to return back to normal life.'' Above all, the people have not come out of the trauma of tsunami, she said and added whenever the sea gets rough, the people fear yet another Tsunami.
''Particularly, the girls have the most problem as they do not have privacy,'' Galappatty said. Even though the cases of infectious diseases are reported rarely from these places, she said there are great chances for an outbreak.
Coming to the condition of children and women, the Colombo based worker says that the children were not able to go to schools and also were facing mental strain. To overcome the traumas, she says psycho- social education was being imparted in these places.
Another factor is that the women and the widows are engaged in self-employment which provides relief.
Asked how they felt during their visit to the relief camps in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, she says the difference that she saw here was that the women in the camps here sat idle without doing anything and only cursing their fate. ''This can create more confusion for them. In Lankan camps at least some women are self employed and there is an urge to do something.''
Source: Malayala Manorama - India
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