Through the above actions and with your active participation, I commit to make Colombo a Centre of Excellence. Outcomes will include: A liveable City – Better living conditions for tenement dwellers.
It is vital that those whose livelihoods are located in the City also reside in the City. This is beneficial to both society and the economy. However, the practice of condemning thousands of our citizens and their children to lives spent in sub-standard housing, sharing toilets and getting their water from stand pipes cannot continue. We have turned a blind eye to this tragedy for far too long.
The Government is committed to provide decent liveable housing to those now living in illegal structures on reservations and Government land. Within the next three years, 35,000 decent, livable housing units will be built within City limits by the Government. The CMC under my leadership will play an active role in this effort, ensuring that the interests of those being resettled are safeguarded.
The Government has to relocate people in certain circumstances to fulfill its commitment to give decent, liveable housing, but I will ensure that no citizen is relocated outside of metropolitan Colombo.
Before any relocation plans are made, communities will be included in the process and consulted.
I will ensure that the CMC is closely involved in the design and operation of demonstration communities from which lessons can be drawn for the effective design and operation of new housing communities for those currently living in sub-standard conditions.
This process can resulted in the phenomena of inner city “projects”. As you can see in a number of western cities, piling low-income people on top of each other in high-rise projects can result in a catastrophe of crime and violence. The best option for this might be to compensate people so they can find their own dwellings and ensure that they are not able to set up informal illegal housing elsewhere.
Thank you for the comment. Many things have to be balanced here. Simply giving money will not meet the standard criteria of involuntary resettlement. People need to be close to their livelihoods. The demonstration communities referred to below will give us (and the UDA) the opportunity to get the balance right.
What’s the plan in terms of employment and crime? A lot of these guys living in shanties are very technically skilled and are sometimes business savvy. Given the right training and the employment/investment opportunities, you can raise them out of poverty or it will be a start in the least. Do you have any auxiliary businesses or projects in mind alongside government initiatives to provide employment or investment opportunities to these guys?
For example, why not let guys like this run cleaning services at government buildings? it’s a business opp for them and they have the people to hire. This is just off the top of my mind but would like to know what your plans are.
Would like to see some of the private companies serving the government on minor services be shifted out (these guys cater to the private sector anyway) and start-ups by low income earners be given the opportunity. It’s an efficient way to start them up and they can grow from there. But they need support.
Commit to implement within the CMC, the National Policy on Involuntary Resettlement (NIRP) (An Independent Consultant developed write up on the NIRP attached) developed in 2000 and approved by the then Cabinet, with the critical elements of the policy embeddings the following principles, which must be binding on all development projects within the CMC resulting in displacing people and require implementing agencies to ensure that ;
Involuntary re settlements should be should be carried out only if it is unavoidable
Where it is deemed unavoidable affected people should be assisted to re-establish themselves and facilitated to improve their quality of life
Affected people should be fully consulted through a transparent public consultation process in the selection of the relocation sites, livelihood compensation and development options.
Either replacement land should be provided or cash paid in lie as compensation taking account of lost land, structures and livelihoods
Pay promptly compensation for all land at replacement values
People who do not have documented title to land should receive fair and just treatment
Thank you for the comment and paper. We will work with UDA which has the lead role here to incorporate your ideas.