Amidst monsoon woes, Lanka to tap donors for refugees
The Sri Lankan government says it is taking measures to ensure that the camps housing refugees will cope with the onset of monsoon rains. The government is also planning to tap foreign donors to raise more cash to look after over 250,000 displaced people.
Colombo: UN agencies have expressed concern that the camps will flood, and the thousands of people in them will have no access to clean water.
In August, sudden storms flooded many of the vast camps, submerging toilets and contaminating water.
Thousands of makeshift homes were also damaged in the rainfall.
Now the Sri Lankan government says it is rapidly installing drainage systems in the camps ahead of the monsoon.
About 10% of refugees have been allowed to leave, and the government says it intends to resettle most of the others by the end of this year.
The government is still coming under domestic and international pressure over the huge closed camps in Vavuniya district, which Tamil war refugees cannot freely leave.
'Serious threat'
Last week a top UN expert on refugee affairs, Walter Kaelin, visited them and expressed many concerns, saying for instance that low areas are likely to flood in the imminent monsoon causing "serious threats to health and life".
Sri Lanka's human rights minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, said drainage culverts and pipe systems were being rapidly put in place with some UN help.
But the UN, and the Sri Lankan opposition, would much prefer the refugees to be let out of the camps more quickly, rather than being kept inside even with improved drainage systems.
A prominent Tamil politician, Mano Ganesan, told the BBC he was worried that the camps were being made permanent or semi-permanent.
The government has said it is taking very seriously an incident nine days ago in which soldiers guarding the camps fired, injuring at least two people who were trying to move from one camp zone to another.
A senior official said such movements were now allowed but it seemed that in this instance some soldiers felt they were being threatened.
A written report of inquiry was under way and some refugees and two soldiers had appeared in court and been granted bail.
Meanwhile the government has decided to tap foreign donors to raise more cash to look after over 250,000 people displaced by its offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels, a minister said Monday.
"We are drawing up a fresh appeal to meet our running costs next year that will include funds for livelihood support and resettlement projects," Minister of Disaster Management Mahinda Samarasinghe told reporters in the capital Colombo.
Sri Lanka already received 225 million dollars in aid pledges just before the fighting ended in May to look after civilians who lost their homes, he said.
Some 195 million dollars of that pledge money has been received so far, Samarasinghe added.
He declined to say how much Sri Lanka was hoping to receive for next year.
But the sum sought from foreign donors would be "much, much more than the 225 million dollars raised this year," the minister said.
He made the remarks before a meeting attended by representatives of the Sri Lankan government, various UN agencies, the Red Cross and diplomatic officials.
The money is given both directly and through multilateral organisations.
Sri Lanka has detained at least 250,000 Tamils in camps since the end of the island's ethnic conflict six months ago.
The government, which promised the UN it would re-settle all people displaced during decades of war by January, says it must detain the civilians until they are screened to see who are former Tiger fighters.
The government is facing intense criticism for its handling of the final stages of the war against the Tigers, whose leadership was wiped out in May.
Sri Lanka is also resisting calls to probe alleged war crimes
