Colombo: A majority of Tamil Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) lodged in various welfare camps in Northern Sri Lanka have resumed normal lives even as the government is trying to provide habitation and basic amenities to them.
According to inputs from the Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services Ministry, as many as 1,93, 607 have been resettled and the remaining 76,205 IDPs are housed in six welfare villages in the Menik Farm area of Vavuniya.
More than 23,000 of them leave the welfare villages daily for work and personal reasons and they are given transport facilities, Secretary ULM Haldeen said.
These people are original settlers of Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Madhu regions where the de-mining operations were continuing, Haldeen said adding they would be resettled in their original villages and lands after they are cleared of mines.
These IDPs would be resettled stage by stage when their original villages are made safe for human habitation, the state owned Daily News quoted Haldeen to say.
The Special Presidential Task Force for Rehabilitation and Resettlement headed by Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa is taking steps to expedite the de-mining process.
The Northern Province Governor's Office has allocated Rs 750 million for restarting the livelihood of resettled IDPs, the newspaper said.
Under this assistance scheme 23,519 families have already received the Rs 25,000 grant.
Northern Province Governor GA Chandrasiri had recently handed over funds to some of the families. A total of 30,000 families will benefit from the programme, the newspaper quoted a senior Government official as saying.
Meanwhile, according to the Joint Humanitarian Update issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as of 11 March, 1,85,127 people have been resettled in Vavuniya, Mannar, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, Polonnaruwa and Central Kandy.
Many young men and women leave the resettlement areas to find work and avail themselves of education services in other districts, the Presidential Secretariat website said here.
The District Secretaries have been directed to provide assistance to these people to bring back their lives to normalcy and find means to livelihood.
As per a UNOCHA report, each IDP family is given dry rations provided by the World Food Programme which are sufficient for six months.
Infrastructure facilities have been improved in the villages while security measures are also in place, UNOCHA report said.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, March 27, 2010, 16:39