July 1, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 30, 1424

CHAVAKACHCHERI (Sri Lanka): Chavakachcheri was reduced to rubble when Sri Lankan soldiers and Tamil Tiger rebels fought over it with rocket launchers, an infamous example of the price civilians paid for two decades of ethnic war.

But although many residents have returned and the sole shopping mall has been rebuilt, locals say Chavakachcheri also highlights the lack of promised government help in rebuilding their lives.

“So far we have not received anything from the government,” said S. Satheeskumar, 21, a shopkeeper in a recently reopened jewellry shop. The government’s failure to deliver on promises to rebuild war-ravaged Tamil areas was one of the reasons the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suspended peace talks in April.

Nearly 70,000 people, or 19,000 families, have returned to Chavakachcheri, but so far only 4,000 families have received a promised 25,000 rupees ($258) in government resettlement aid, said P.L. Thlaganayagam, a government bureaucrat in Jaffna.

All of the returnees have gone back to homes with caved-in roofs or collapsed walls.

Some, like widow Siuapatham Poomalar, do not even have that.

She stays with friends in another village close to Jaffna city 15 km, and has no idea how she will rebuild her house.

“So far there has been no help,” said the mother of five. “I come back here to sell vegetables.”

It was the second time Poomalar had had to flee because of the war, after fighting drove her out of Palaly in the northern part of the peninsula 13 years ago.

“My husband went missing when we left Palaly. I do not know what happened to him,” she said.—Reuters