Launch of Indian Housing Project 2 October 2012

Today is the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's birthday and what better way to celebrate it than hold the official launch of Phase 2 of Indian Housing project which will provide 43,000 owner-driven houses to families displaced by over 25 years of conflict in Sri Lanka.. The International federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and its partner the Sri Lanka Red Cross, are one of four implementing agencies chosen to faciliate the construction on 16,800 houses..

The Minister of Economic Development and the Indian High Commissioner will be flying into sites where Red Cross is building houses. The President and DG SL Red Cross and i will be there to meet them and explain our methodology. What a fitting way to commemorate the birth of one of the world's great humanitarians; Mahatma Gandhi. 

Yesterday The President of the Sri Lanka Red Cross Jagath Abeysinghe and Director General Tissa Abbeywickrama visited IHP sites chosen for the most vulnerable people in Poodakary near Mulankavil. 

Villages we visited are in clearings in jungles and we held discussions with the people reinforcing the concept of the Indian Housing programme. This remote area took us three and a half hours to reach from Jaffna and are the mos most vulnerable people I have seen while working two and a half years in the north.t 

The Sri Lanka Red Cross has already completed 3000 houses under its own programme so we visited many of these houses as well. Below, the Red Cross technical officer explains the new IHP housing programme.

Here is a typical house built by the Red Cross in Kilinochchidistrict and those planned to be built under the Indian Housing Programme will be similar. Photo: Bob McKerrow