A cry for help from 19 desperate families
Please help us is their cry. About 19 families living in the village of Kumburupitiya in Kuchchaveli, Trincomalee are appealing for assistance as they are facing abject poverty, they say.
These families who had returned to their lands after living in camps for the displaced during the war, say they are getting little government support to build their livelihoods after all these years and they are now facing food shortages, with the govt. deciding to stop assistance, as well as housing problems. The people have been reduced to living in small shacks.
Some earn a meager income working as labourers while others help fisher- men pull their nets ashore.
The villagers claim that when they returned, there were others on their land although they had documents showing legal ownership. “We were living under trees until a private land owner allowed us to put up huts in his property," one villager said.
They say they had been promised seven houses but authorities had said the person contracted for the projected had cheated the authorities.
Divisional secretary P. Daneshwaram concedes that most of the land belonging to the 19 families had been illegally acquired by others. He also said that they had no samurdhi privileges.