The payment of Rs 50 for each refugee per day will be replaced by dry rations worth Rs 336 per month. A family of five or more will receive Rs 1,260 worth rations. Aid workers say the new measure is designed to force refugees to leave the Vanni and will lead to further deterioration of refugee conditions.
Over 68,000 people have crossed into Vavuniya from Vanni after Army restrictions were lifted in October. According to refugees, the LTTE is allowing people to leave but levying Rs 200 each for permit application forms. Army Commander Rohan Daluwatte says some LTTE cadre among the refugees have been arrested.
Thirty six people died of disease in Mallavi hospital in March. The hospital is struggling to treat over 1,000 patients admitted and 10,000 out-patients in a month without adequate supply of medicines. In March another 22 patients died in Kilinochchi hospital. Doctors say they could have been saved if facilities to preserve blood were available. Reports say many people in Mullaitivu hospital have also died of typhoid, septicaemia, malaria and diarrhoea. ICRC’s medical coordinator Claude Felix told Colombo newspaper Sunday Times that approval for medicines is a tortuous process and every single tablet has to be authorised by the Health and Defence ministries.
The Navy says a Sea Tiger base and 40 boats were destroyed at Chalai, 14 miles north of Mullaitivu in early April. Army shelling killed student P Pradeep in Vaddakachchi, east of Kilinochchi. Two others were seriously wounded. The Army shot dead five refugees including 17 year-old Thayalan, when they returned to their homes at Uruthirapuram.
In Vavuniya, the 16,000 refugees in camps complain that after the government decision to end payments, no relief has been provided to them after 15 April. Tamil group EPRLF’s relief coordinator T Sritharan says sanitary conditions in the camps have deteriorated and has urged immediate government action.