Tsunami survivors still homeless

CHENNAI: Two years have passed since the tsunami disaster, but thousands of survivors are yet to return to their normal lives in coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, mainly due to inordinate delay in allotment of permanent houses.

Though the government and NGOs acted swiftly on various fronts in the aftermath of the December 26, 2004 tragedy, progress had been slow with regard to rehabilitation, particularly in providing proper dwellings, say survivors.

According to official statistics, around 37,000 permanent houses for the survivors are yet to be made in the state. In the worst-affected Nagapattinam district, construction work for 18,600 houses by the government and various agencies started in March 2005, but only 6,168 of them have been handed over to the beneficiaries.

The situation is almost the same in the adjacent Cuddalore district. Of 2,393 houses ordered for construction by the Tamil Nadu government, only 1,703 have so far been completed. According to officials, site identification took a long time. The deadly tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people in a dozen nations, including over 10,000 in India.

And when sites were identified, survivors found them less convenient and wanted them to be located elsewhere. Life in the temporary shelters has been ‘painful’ for the survivors for the past two years.