Vanni civilians in Jaffna SLA detention centres lack basic facilities

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 April 2009, 16:19 GMT]
Jaffna Government Agent requested immediate assistance from the local Non-government organizations (NGOs) in Jaffna to help meet the basic needs of the civilians from Vanni placed in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centres in Jaffna, in a meeting held with the representatives of local and international NGOs, due to government’s failure to offer any assistance, local NGO representatives said.

Civilians brought from Vanni are crammed into the SLA detention centres hastily set up in schools which do not have electricity or lamps, NGO representatives who had visited the centres said.

The people in these centres have not been provided with their basic needs such as cooked meals, drinking water and proper toilet facilities, they said.

The NGOs and public continue to assist more than 6,000 civilians from Vanni held in the SLA detention camps.

World Food Program supplies only dry food to the detainees.

Meanwhile, some of the inmates are infected with chicken pox and other infectious diseases and there is a great risk in others getting infected as all are crammed together.

Though the government had been keen to bring civilians from Vanni to the SLA detention camps no proper preparations have been made to house them, the NGOs pointed out.

NGO representatives have raised the need to segregate the infected people, with the GA.

Construction of temporary huts for the Vanni civilians have begun but these huts lack the basic facilities besides being erected in low lying areas, the NGO representatives said.