IDPs living on Jaffna railway track area evicted

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 16:49 GMT]
Families of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living on Sri Lanka government railway properties since they were evicted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) twenty years ago from their residences in Valikaamam North, were forced to leave Tuesday to leave their temporary shelters in railway crossings, stations and officers’ quarters as the dead line to quit being 30 June, sources in Jaffna said. The government officials and SLA officers who were very keen to evict the families had not provided any alternate place for them to move in, the families complained.



SL government’s decision to resume train service between Vavuniyaa and Kaangeasanththu’rai is the cause for the eviction of the IDPs who were living in the railway properties in places from Kodiakaamam to Thellippazhai.

Though some of these families are able to find temporary shelters in adjoining government lands, the houses of relatives and friends the others are in quandary with no place to seek shelter.

Neither the government officials nor the politicians in Jaffna have the time even to glance in their direction, the IDPs complained.



Meanwhile, the president of the Federation of Jaffna Non-government Organizations (NGOs), C. V. K. Sivagnanam, had requested Jaffna Government Agent (GA) on 23rd June not to evict immediately the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), numbering around a hundred families, living in camps on the railway track area in Jaffna since the time they were thrown out of their residences in Valikaamam North which were declared High Security Zones (HSZ) by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in 1990.