Tsunami victims of Vakarai division suffer without basic facilities

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 January 2005, 00:08 GMT]
Tsunami victims in several villages in the Vakarai divisional secretariat division in the Batticaloa district, now being cut off with their mainland as the Panichchankery Bridge collapsed in Sunday's calamity, suffer without adequate food supply and other essential items such as dry ration, kitchen utensils, milk food, feeding bottles and good drinking water, civil sources said.

Refugees in Vakarai

Damaged Panichchankerni bridge

Candian funded Trincomalee Welfare Association with relief materials

A section of refugees in Vakarai

Orphan infant with fellow victims

Vakarai divisional secretariat division was the worst affected area by the floods in the Batticaloa district in December second week. The villages, Mankerny, Panichankerni, Uriankaddu, Vakarai Central, Kandaladi, Vammivattavan, Palkerni and Kathiraveli come under the administration of the Vakarai division. Hundreds of families had sought refuge at schools and other public buildings during flood. Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) organized relief for flood victims then.

Now they are back to refugee camps following Sunday Tsunami. A portion of the Panichchankerni Bridge that connects Vakarai with the mainland, Batticaloa district collapsed in Sunday Tsunami waves and the transport between the village and Batticaloa has been cut off completely since then.

Since Sunday till Wednesday no relief reached the victims of Tsunami in Vakarai and no camps to shelter the displaced were put up.

A team of volunteers organized by the Socio- Economic Development Organization (SEDOT) of Trincomalee district arrived Vakarai Wednesday with urgently needed relief materials worth two and a half thousand rupees through Verugal, a border village in the Trincomalee district as no transport facilities were provided from Batticaloa side. A team of 15 final-year medical students of Jaffna University also accompanied the SEDOT volunteers to provide medical assistance. Trincomalee Rotary Club also sent a team of foreign medical officers from Colombo.

SEDOT volunteers put up three camps immediately with the UNICEF supplied two hundred tents thus provided shelter to victims as they from Sunday till Wednesday were staying under trees, and in other badly damaged buildings. Three makeshift camps were put up at Uriankaddu, Pulichchankandal and Kandaladi sheltering about one thousand families.

Volunteers found a three month old infant in a camp being looked after by other victims as the mother and father of the infant are reported dead in the Sunday Tsunami, one of the SEDOT volunteers said.

Volunteers from ZOA, Sarvodaya, Action Faim and ESCO also rushed to the village to provide food, medical facilities, kitchen utensils, milk food and other essential items.


Newly constructed NECORD funded Vakarai peripehral hospital waiting for the opening has been damaged by Tsunami