SL military, police, traders, exert pressure on civil authorities in Mannaar to alienate lands

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 September 2019, 20:49 GMT]
The occupying SL Police in Mannaar city is under constant pressure from the civil, religious and private property owners to vacate from their premises. The SL Police is harassing the Divisional Secretariat officials to release crown lands as compensation to relocate itself. Similarly, the SL Army from Tha'l'laadi cantonment in the mainland is demanding alternative properties allocated for its use before considering the release of 21 acres of the lands it has seized from a private Tamil land-owner since 1990. In the meantime, millionaire Sinhala investors from the South want large tracts of public lands leased or sold to them to put up wind and solar plants along the coast of the Mannaar island from Oalaith-thoduvaay to Thoadda-ve'li. The officials are already struggling to find lands for thousands of uprooted families from Mannaar, including those returning from exile in Tamil Nadu.

While the officials are working hard to find plots of ten perches per uprooted families, they are under political pressure from various SL ministers in Colombo to alienate hundreds of acres of crown lands to southern traders who see economic gains through operating wind and solar plants.

Following the ‘development’ plans laid out by the Asian Development Bank-supported scheme of solar and wind power plants, five private sector millionaire investors have submitted applications requesting lands.

The SL military is unnecessarily keeping large tracts of lands in Tha'l'laadi, Mu'l'lik-ku'lam, Ma'richchuk-kaddi and at several locations in Maanthai West.

The SL departments of forest and wildlife conservation have already seized both public and private lands from Pa'l'li-munai to Chi'ru-naavat-ku'lam, making the task of finding alternative grounds for resettling people very difficult.

It is under these circumstances the SL Police is refusing to vacate from the residential buildings that belong to the Methodist Church in Mannaar as well as the Saiva temple of Vairavar deity.

The SL Senior Superintendent of Police in Mannaar has established his residential office at the lands that belong to the Methodist Church.

Furthermore, high-ranking SL Police officers are using the residences allocated for the District Secretariat officials as their residences. The SL Police retaining two acres of lands with properties that belong to the District Secretariat, according to the divisional secretariat officials in Mannaar.

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