Caritas office in Jaffna complains that relief is being hampered by government bureaucracy
Colombo (AsiaNews) Relief operations are being carried out at snail-pace in Tamil Tigers-controlled north-eastern Sri Lanka.
Fr C.D. Jeyakumar, Caritas Jaffna (HUDEC) director, told AsiaNews that government red tape is hampering tsunami Catholic relief operations in the area where separatist rebels and government forces have been fighting a civil war for decades.
Father Jeyakumar said that backlogs in NGO-led relief operations have formed as a result of government delays and constraints.
"We have difficulties in clearance because the government is giving [us] problems," he said. "For example, we have generators donated by the French government which are stuck in the south. We are told we must get this letter from the GA [i.e. government agent] and that permit from the health authorities, and so on. . . . And we have consignments of tents which have been down south for over two weeks now." Without the tents, the priest explains, people are forced to live in the refugee camps instead of going back to their own home villages.
Problems aside, Father Jeyakumar is reassured by the assistance foreign Caritas agencies are providing HUDEC.
"Many Caritas offices have been with us right from the beginning," he stressed, "like those in France, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg, to name some. Already on the day after the Tsunami, they were helping us. They are very much with us and this is so encouraging".
HUDEC estimates that the tsunami left about 150,000 to 200,000 people in the north homeless.
According to Father Jeyakumar, survivors are still traumatised. "People are still afraid to go out to sea and to return to their homes. The fear remains, that's the basic thing."
Recently, some analysts warned that any attmept by the government or the rebels to turn the tragedy to their own advantage would create problems for survivors in the north. (DV)
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