Tamils complain discrimination in selection of beneficiaries of Indian housing scheme

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 September 2014, 21:49 GMT]
A point system introduced to determine the recipients of the Indian housing scheme discriminates the uprooted people of Champoor in Trincomalee district, civil sources in Moothoor East told TamilNet on Wednesday. The recipients are being selected on the basis that their displacement after year 2008 and that they should now be living in temporary huts at the moment in addition to certain points based criteria. The people of Champoor region were uprooted from their native villages in 2006. Most of the potential recipients are being filtered away by this method, the sources said. Further, there is no transparency in the way the points are being assigned. In some cases, government officers are being bribed to assign temporary huts for some applicants to become eligible, the sources further said.

Poverty-stricken families that do not score necessary points get discriminated while some wealthy people who meet the criteria get qualified for the assistance, representatives of the uprooted people said.

People who had displaced to Colombo and other cities were behind bribing the Sri Lankan government officials to receive the needed documentation by assigning temporary shelters to them in the district, the uprooted people further complain.

500 houses are being provided to war-affected people from Moothoor East and another 500 to 1,000 houses are to be shared between Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims in the other divisions of the district.

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