World Bank team to assess housing reconstruction in east

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 May 2005, 17:30 GMT]
A World Bank (WB) team is scheduled to visit the districts of Trincomalee and Batticaloa on June 1st and 2nd to assess the progress made in the reconstruction of houses in war and tsunami affected areas under the North East Housing Reconstruction Programme (NEHRP), sources in Colombo said.

The World Bank funds NEHRP to construct about thirty thousand houses in the affected areas in the northeast.

The WB team will first visit Thiriyai village, about 42 km off north of Trincomalee town on June 1. Thiriyai is a traditional Tamil village, which was completely destroyed when the Sri Lanka Army launched its military operation in the year 1990. Houses in the village were either erased to the ground or only skeletons remained when the displaced people started to resettle after signing the Memorandum of Understanding by the then Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) adopted the village to rehabilitate and resettle the displaced.

The entire population fled when the government troops entered the village in 1990. Thiriyai is located in the Kuchchaveli divisional secretariat division.

The WB team thereafter will inspect the village Sambaltivu in the Trincomalee divisional secretariat division, NEHRP sources added.

On June 2nd the WB team will tour the Batticaloa district. The team would visit Meeravodai, Chenkaladi in the Batticaloa district. On the same day the WB team would hand over payments to beneficiaries selected under the housing reconstruction at an event to be held at Vavunativu DS office.