DMIP activities this week

The Green Movement have been involved with the rehabilitation of families in the Newara Eliya district affected by last January’s landslide. People of Hanguranketha and Walapane have been living in temporary shelters with basic amenities and in cramped conditions for over a year now. The DS deemed the land where they lived unsafe and promised to find suitable lands for them to be resettled. They found new land for 192 families from Hanguranketha, as of 31^st December, and most families have started to move. One member of our staff went to assess their progress as well as to investigate the new site. What he found was not encouraging. It is simply a piece of land, with demarcated plots that will not suffice for all their agricultural and farming needs, let alone for them to live easily in. There are no facilities in place and people have had to clear the land themselves and take what materials they have from the camp to the new site. Being a strong lobbying and campaigning organisation, the GMSL plan to challenge the government to find alternative lands, as it seems this one is even more unsafe than where they originated from. There is no point in settling people in a place that puts people at even more risk from landslides than before. We ask that the newly resettled retired soldiers nearby could perhaps swap with the families, as the soldiers have ample land that they will not even use. As well as their right to safe lands of course, they require their basic needs to be met, and the GMSL are there with a suitable WATSAN project to be delivered.