Govt. to resettle all remaining IDPs before end of the year

The Government says that all Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) will be resettled before the end of the year as the Government by then expects to complete the demining operations in the north.

The Government has so far resettled 243,787 displaced persons in their respective homelands. However, there still remain 7,156 IDPs at the Kadirgamar relief village and 9,132 IDPs at the Ananda Kumaraswamy relief village in Vavuniya.

Persons from the Mullaitivu District are yet to be resettled while the resettlement of the IDPs from other districts has been completed. The Government attributes the delay in the resettlement programme to the de-mining programme that is being carried out in the north.

In total 373,593 persons of 114,561 families have returned to the Northern Province. The number includes the families displaced in the later stages of war after 2008 and also the families displaced earlier due to the ethnic cleansing by the LTTE before 2008.

Resettlement Minister Gunaratne Weerakoon who visited the Kadirgamar relief camp recently has said that President Mahinda Rajapaksa had instructed to expedite and complete the resettlement programme before the end of the year.

Officials of the Resettlement Ministry and the Government officials of Vavuniya District have held a special discussion on Wednesday in the Kadirgamar Village on the progress of the resettlement process in Mullaitivu and Vavuniya Districts.