News
Desperate, poor and homeless
The number of homeless people country-wide keeps growing and in desperation they seek out the most unimaginable places to seek shelter ranging from the rooftop of abandoned buildings, to public toilets, to disused carts and cemeteries
On a single midnight of a particular night when the Census was taken in 2012, enumerators counted 3,418 homeless persons. But the figure could be higher as many could have not been discovered and gone unaccounted.
Last week our photographers captured scenes of homeless taking shelter at different locations in the country. A family was found living in a public toilet. The enterprising family had successfully turned part of the toilet into a living quarters and had even setup a TV in it.
The toilet is currently used by the public.
In Colombo a desperate man was using the cement slab of a cemetery used for laying out the dead a his bed, another found shelter in an SLT cable box, while a desperate woman found shelter clambering up a two-storied building to use an abandoned room.
We also found an incapacitated man living in a broken bullock cart in a village in the south of the country.
This desperate man has turned a still-used public toilet into his home at night
This baby’s chance of a long life seems a distant dream given the proximity of the railway line
Housing is a basic human right, but this concrete structure housing telephone cable, has become this old man’s home
A loss of hope... this man uses the cement slab used for laying corpses by day, into his home at night
This incapacitated man lives in this dilapidated abandoned ox cart