Tsunami camps get rotten food

2005-02-01 21:34

Shinali Senanayake

Colombo - The government began investigating complaints on Tuesday that food aid intended for tsunami victims in eastern Sri Lanka was going astray and that some of the homeless living in camps were being fed rotten supplies.

Government records indicate that more than sufficient food supplies have been dispatched to the tsunami-hit town of Batticaloa, 220km east of the capital Colombo.

So what's happening midstream?

"There is some foul play somewhere down the line," an official from the centre for national operations, David Muller, said on Tuesday.

The centre co-ordinates tsunami-related work, and Muller had just returned from a mission to check the accommodation in refugee camps in Batticaloa.

During that trip he discovered that people living in several camps were being given poor quality rice and spoiled lentils to eat.

Muller said the government had sent 1 178tons of rice, 380 tons of lentils and 241 tons of sugar to Batticaloa - by far in excess of the area's requirements - so there was no reason for anyone in the camps to be given inedible rations.

On Monday, hundreds protested in the neighbouring town of Trincomalee, claiming the government had given them no food aid and offered no help to rebuild their lives.

Supplies 'forcibly diverted'

And officials have complained in recent weeks that at least four trucks with rice, lentils and sugar bound for minority ethnic Tamil areas in the north were forcibly diverted by majority Sinhalese mobs and low-ranking government officials to predominantly Sinhalese areas.

"There is definitely some malpractice going on aimed at discrediting the government," Muller said.

The chief administrator in Batticaloa, Veilmurugu Shanmugan, said there was no shortage of fresh supplies and that the government was releasing sufficient food to the camps.

"We are looking into the issue," Shanmugan said in a telephone interview in response to the complaints.

"We will take necessary action to rectify the situation."

He said volunteer organisations have taken over the running of some camps and that they might be withholding stocks, but he declined to elaborate or name those organisations.

Scores of local, foreign and independent volunteers groups have been engaged in relief work across the island since the December 26 tsunami struck killing more than 30 000 people and displacing 1 million others.

Nearly 3 000 people were killed along Batticaloa's coastline alone, and more than 62 000 people became homeless in the area.

- SAPA