Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the company of Sagala Ratnayake and Malik Samarawickreme are in India where the Prime Minister is due to meet with his counterpart Narendra Modi on Saturday.
Last April state run China Railway Beijing Engineering Group won a tender in excess of USD 300 million to build 40,000 houses in Jaffna. The funding was due from China’s Exim Bank.
The project was halted in the face of intense consternation that the residents demanded brick houses instead of structures made out of concrete proposed by the Chinese.
Since the end of the war in 2009 the Sri Lankan Government has struggled to provide housing that experts have placed at over 15,000 units.
The Rajapaksa Administration totally failed in this aspect of resettlement whilst this government has continuously grappled with exactly what type of housing to provide.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s historical alliance with India has being seen as one of the principal reasons behind the government’s entry of building 28,000 houses by an Indian firm and two Sri Lankan firms in the north and east ahead of his visit to India.
Previously Sri Lanka has entertained unsolicited proposals to provide homes to the war affected areas that were made up of different materials but all have been rejected, supposedly by the people but spearheaded by the TNA.
