IDPs get new identity cards

P. Krishnaswamy

The Government has initiated several additional welfare measures in respect of over 62,000 civilians, who had fled the LTTE held area and arrived in Vavuniya, to improve their conditions, including the issue of special identity cards to ensure their freedom of movement 'progressively', Government sources said.

Twenty five technical staff on IT processing and programming from the state sector - 15 of them from Trincomalee, 10 from Vavuniya and five from the Presidential Secretariat - are already engaged in the process of registering the refugees and processing their data as a prelude to issuing the special ICs while other facilities such as the instalment of tele-communication centres , with facilities to contact relatives/friends overseas, enhanced educational and sanitary facilities and ambulances and buses to each relief village and transit centre are also to be provided.

Of the four relief villages to be constructed for the refugees in a land area of about 1500 acres in the Cheddikulam Menik Farm site, the Kadirgamar relief village, where about 2000 families are housed, has almost been completed, the Arunachalam relief village is nearing completion while the other two villages, Ananda Coomaraswamy relief village and Ramanathan relief village , will be completed soon.

The number of refugees who arrived from the yet-to-be cleared areas of Mullaitivu during the week ending March 29 was 5000 and the civilians were continuing to arrive in their hundreds everyday braving LTTE threats, sources said.

Refugees arriving from Mullaitivu and other areas of the Vanni are now being housed for 48 hours at the transit camp at Omanthai, 10 km north of Vavuniya, before being sent to Vavuniya. They are being provided cooked food at the Omanthai transit camp. All facilities, including essential food items, non-food items, water, health and sanitary facilities and clothes, where necessary, are being provided collectively by the government, WFP, UNHCR and certain INGOs and NGOs to the refugees in Vavuniya in addition to maximum security to protect their lives, the sources said.