Let’s forget the tittle-tattle and get the IDPs housed
Enough is enough. To my personal knowledge and direct visual experience the socalled debate regarding housing for the Internally Displaced People (IDP) of the Northern Province has gone on for the last 18 months. The only sure outcome has been the fact that these IDPs have not been housed and continue to live in squalor. In the mean time the bourgeois elite who make the decisions, have sat in their steel framed prefabricated imported Singapore structures sipping gin and tonic pontificating on what the IDP fisher-folk and peasantry actually need. If it was not a tragedy, all the ill-founded opinions and procrastination would be hilarious. Each article quotes ‘engineers’ who are two a penny like politicians.
We have to recognize, that life moves on. The very same chest thumpers, cannot sit on the 60th floor of their apartment block in the capital city if the scaffolding was bamboo and the walls were wattle and daub. Guess what? The walls are pre-fabricated and shipped from far afield and are slotted in within hours. There is not the technology transfer that this country so needs. If the housing planners and manufacturers have discussed and agreed on design and the Ministry of Finance has approved funding the case should be open and shut. Cheap housing is not necessarily good or appropriate housing.The Vanni is strewn with cheap houses that are empty. The windows have iron bars only. No privacy. Sarees and sarongs adorn these to obtain this. The roofing often is metal and the ceilings in this day and age asbestos. Hooray for pseudo intellectual planners for the poor! There is not a shop or school in sight. Temples and kovils, yes. Maybe the IDPs should be forced to go and live in these houses, but that would not be a vote winning move.
The bullock cart has been banned for years because it churned up the melting tarmac on the roads. These were replaced by ‘Land masters’ that have now become ‘road masters’ that spew kerosene exhaust fumes and are a danger to other traffic on the roads. The bullock at least produced manure for organic fertilizer and was able to produce more engines biologically. No longer the ‘manvetties’ that were carried into the fields to perform the morning abolutions. These have been replaced with half broken cement toilets that stink and are non-hygienic. These toilets require water, disinfectant and a plan for solid waste management.
What is needed is some lateral thinking, dealing with the past and which is of benefit to the future. The IDPs have never lived in isolated houses. Most of them lived in communities. It is therefore, more logical to rebuild “communities”. A proportion of the funding could be put aside to build such a ‘village’ with the par- ticipation of the intended population. Instead of lines of houses a different lay out around a primary school, shops, a public library and meeting room with communal electronic media and Internet access could be provided.
I call on Minister D.M. Swaminathan to consider this. In such matters often what is needed is leadership and decisive implementation.
Let’s forget the tittle-tattle and get the IDPs housed. The camel riding Bedouin in a tent would if given the opportunity live in the Burj Al Arab and drive a Lamborghini! Mr Angry from Kokuvil Via email