Over 20 rehabilitation centres to be set up :

Profiles of over 10,000 ex-LTTE cadres completed

by Shanika SRIYANANDA

The Government has completed the profiles of over 10,000 ex-LTTEers, who are under Government care for rehabilitation.

Each ex-LTTEer has a profile with details including, his personal information, involvement with the LTTE, education standard and the skills he wants to pursue.

Commissioner General of Rehabilitation Maj. Gen. Daya Ratnayake told the Sunday Observer that these ex-cadres would be categorised for rehabilitation according to the information in the profiles. The LTTEers who were forcibly recruited by the terrorists in the latter part of the war, had surrendered to the military in large numbers and the Government was compelled to implement a comprehensive rehabilitation process to integrate the ex-cadres back into the society.

Providing educational and vocational training facilities are major concerns of this rehabilitation program.

According to Maj. Gen. Ratnayake, the rehabilitation program is the out-come of recommendations by prominent experts in the fields of education, higher education, vocational training, religion, art and culture and health.

“We hope to get the expertise of NGOs, INGOs, community leaders and even the Tamil diaspora to improve the rehabilitation program”, he said.

“The prime aim of the rehabilitation program is to turn these youth who were once considered the most ruthless terrorists into responsible citizens”, he said.Meanwhile, over 20 centres - Protection, Accommodation and Rehabilitation Centres (PARC) to house the ex-cadres will be constructed soon. Each PARC will have facilities to house over 500 inmates.

“These PARCs will be set up in the North and the East but the exact locations are yet to be finalised”, he said adding that each Centre would have all facilities for education, vocational training and recreation. Maj. Gen. Ratnayake said that facilities would be provided for the ex-cadres who wished to pursue higher studies.

He said that there is a considerable number of youth who had studied up to the Advanced Level. “They would be provided extra tuition classes” to sit the GCE (AL) examination., he said.Tapping the inborn artistic talents of these ex-cadres for singing, drawing and dancing is another area that will be given priority under the program.