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| Sunday, 27 March 2005 |
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Editorial
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Post tsunami reconstruction apace by Lionel Fernando, Chairperson, Disaster Relief Monitoring Unit, Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. There were distribution of 1000 transitional houses to Internally Displaced Persons due to tsunami in Trincomalee District, on the March 26th , 2005 in order to commemorate the three-month anniversary of the tsunami. "This will be followed by distributing another 5600 transitional houses, before the Sinhala and Hindu new year festival", according to the Government Agent of, Tricomalee, Mr. Gamini Rodrigo. Stromme Foundation of Norway is currently focusing on livelihood restoration and also in the education sector. Their programme covers eight Districts in the North, East and the South and as its first initiative 500 micro finance loans were disbursed to a number of tsunami affected families in order to recommence their livelihood. They have also made arrangements to help a number of poor fishermen by giving them canoes to get back to their livelihood of fishing. In addition, the Stromme Foundation provided dry rations, kitchen utensils, mats, pillows, lanterns, etc., to tsunami affected people who were leaving the welfare centres. They implemented a unique system called "cash for work" to those who were affected, by way of giving them Rs. 500 per day up to 10 days, in order to restore their partly damaged houses. Number of families benefited from this were 610 to the value of Rs. 2.5 million. In Batticaloa District, 600 temporary houses and the same number of toilets are being built to commemorate three-month tsunami anniversary. Under the Economic Recovery Programme of Stromme Foundation, they have made arrangements to help 1200 poor coir rope makers in Ahungalla, by distributing coir rope making machines to them. This programme will be held at Keththarama Temple in Ahungalla on March 28th 2005 commencing 9.30 a.m. There will be a video conference between citizens in Sri Lanka and citizens in the United States of America and Australia to discuss the tsunami relief effort. This will take place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on March 29th, Colombo time and is intended to commemorate the three-month anniversary of the tsunami. This will take place at the Distance Learning Centre at No. 28/10, Malalasekera Mawatha in Colombo 06. This videoconferencing is part of an ongoing initiative by a coalition of U.S. citizen groups and international relief organizations called "Partners for Progress". Partners for Progress seeks to sustain the visibility of voices from the tsunami-affected regions over the long-term to ensure that there is long-term awareness of and support for rebuilding in the region. According to the agenda of the video conference, time will be allocated for introductions from various cities of the U.S.A and Australia, with expressions by individuals at each site of their community's concern for the people affected by the tsunami. Further, there will be presentations by several people in Sri Lanka
giving an assessment of the situation here three months later and explaining
in terms that the general public can understand what the needs are on ground
and how the U.S. and Australia can help. In this part, there will also be a
discussion of how U.S. and Australian students can spend their summer in Sri
Lanka helping the country as it continues the rebuilding process. |
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Editorial | Security | Produced by Lake House |
