Partially paid and then forgotten

By Dhananjani Silva

On July 2 this year, The Sunday Times featured the plight of a tsunami community of about 30 families occupying a row of classrooms at Methodist College Dehiwala. A few weeks later, on August 27, the Sunday Times highlighted the plight of another 154 families living in temporary shelters at Vystwyke Park Mattakkuliya, who were hoping they would soon be relocated.

Indrani, who looks after her granddaughtr while her daughter Tanuja goes to work as a labourer, relating her tale of woe. Pix by Berty Mendis

Months have passed and though it has been two years since the tsunami, their saga of suffering and humiliation still continues. The unbearable heat and dust, overflowing toilets and inadequate water supply are their daily lot.

When The Sunday Times contacted Housing Reconstruction and Development Agency (RADA) Director Ramesh Selliah at that time, he assured there would be a speedy solution. Mr. Selliah was not available for comment this week.

The people who were offered two options selected the second one of a cash grant that was to be paid in instalments.

Have they received any kind of redress? The Sunday Times once again visited Vystwyke Park and Methodist College, Dehiwala.

K.D. Indrani, mother of T.A. Tanuja whom the Sunday Times interviewed on the previous occasion, is taking care of Tanuja’s youngest, just 10 months old while Tanjua goes in search of Kuli weda. “Things are getting worse by the day, and we cannot cope with the skyrocketing cost of living. Tanuja’s husband is a kidney patient and unable to work hard, so sometimes all of us – Tanuja, her husband, the four kids and myself — barely have anything to eat even. So she started going to work to support the family,” Indrani says.

Tanuja’s husband Manjula Perera criticizes the government for not helping them regain their livelihoods, let alone expedite the ‘so-called relocation process’.

“I was doing a small home-based business — making wooden handicrafts before the tsunami. But all the equipment and the machinery were lost in the tsunami and after that I couldn’t carry on the business,” he said.

Manjula said that about 62 families in Vystwyke Park, Mattakkuliya would be relocated to places such as Modera Beach, Lunupokuna and Kadirana where they lived prior to the tsunami, thanks to a project by the Bonavista Church, Mattakuliya. The construction work on these donor houses is now in progress.

“They promised to give us the houses by April,” he said adding that they were grateful to the Church for looking into their needs.
Others like S. S. Wadi Amma have received the initial government grant of Rs. 250,000, out of which she has paid an advance to purchase a house. “But we still have not received the second payment. In the meantime, the landlord decided that he is going to sell it to someone else. When we explain the matter to the officials, they tell us that funds have to be passed and we should wait till then, but the owners are not ready to accept the payments in instalments,” she said.

But where relocation is concerned, other than the donor-built houses that the selected 62 families would receive, what is in store for the rest of the families at Vystwyke Park? No one seems to have the answers.

In the case of the families at Methodist College Dehiwala, most have received the initial grant of Rs 250,000. They have already bought three or four plots of land in Kolonnawa but like Mattakkuliya’s tsunami affected, these victims too said that due to the delay in the second payment, they were facing difficulties in negotiating with land owners.

“We hope we would get the next instalment as soon as possible as we are now fed up with living in this filthy place,” M. Subramanium said showing us the environment swarming with flies.

Others are still worse off. Angamutthu, S. Selvi and Thangavelu Raja lamented that they had been left out and they had not even received a cent to buy land.