News
Kandy city cleaners live in squalor
Housing and lands officials have ignored providing permanent homes with basic facilities to some 750 families who have been living in Mahaiyawa in Kandy near the main burial grounds for decades in shacks in unsanitary, inhuman conditions. Many are unskilled workers of the Kandy Municipal Council. Some are descendants of those municipal workers.
Some of the Mahaiyawa squatters have built their shacks with timber while others have managed to build with cement blocks but have not plastered their walls. They all have just three toilets to share. They do not have ownership to the land on which they have built their shacks. Some structures are in a perilous state.
During heavy rains their dwellings are inundated, while some shacks are at risk from collapsing sandbanks. These families help keep the city clean, but they continue to live in squalor.
