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Return displaced people’s jewellery, money: NPC to banks
View(s):Northern Provincial Council chairman C.V.K. Sivagnanam has written to President Mahinda Rajapaksa seeking his intervention to help the people displaced before 1996 to get their jewellery, valuables and money held by banks.
He says that these jewellery items were pawned by the people who were displaced from Jaffna before 1995/96 and therefore it was unfair for the banks to hold these valuables.
Mr. Sivagnanam says if the banks were unable to locate the owners, the money should be then given to the NPC to be used for development work of the Jaffna district. His letter draws the President’s attention to an NPC resolution in this regard.
The resolution said: “In the way the president who visited Kilinochchi recently released to the owners apart of the pawned jewellery that were taken to Colombo, this council resolves to request the release of unredeemed jewellery, lockers and dormant account balances that were taken to Colombo from the Jaffna District by state and private banks due to the mass scale displacement of 1995/1996; to make a public announcement to that effect, and if it is not possible, to do so, then to release the total amount to the Northern Provincial Council for the development of the district.”
Mr. Sivagnanam told the Sunday Times a significant amount of Jaffna people’s belongings were in the custody of the Central Bank and the state.