SL State refuses to renew land permits to resettled Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 September 2018, 16:54 GMT]
The resettled Eezham Tamils from Champoor and the connecting section of Kadatkaraich-cheanai were refused of renewal of their land permits at a mobile land kachcheri held on Sunday at Moothoor. The Eastern Provincial Land Commissioner organised the land meeting at Moothoor to look into the land issues of the resettled people in the Moothoor East. However, the residents of Champoor were told the renewals of their land permits were on hold as the SL State has not revoked the earlier state acquisition of their lands from the times of Rajapaksa rule. The people who are in possession of old documents are refused of housing assistance as well as loans that could be obtained through Samurdhi scheme as they are unable to document current ownership to their lands where they reside.

There are also people who have lost their documents to prove their ownership claims during the war-time displacements.

In the meantime, the occupying Sinhala navy, which is having the SLNS Vidura training base for its marine unit being groomed by the United States Indo Pacific Command in Champoor, has occupied the agricultural lands. The lands acquired by the SL State for coal power plant in the past are also not released back to the rightful owners.

Land matters are said to be decentralised to divisional level and executed by the Divisional Secretariat.

However, the Divisional Secretary is entirely controlled by the unitary system from Colombo.

While the residents of Champoor were refused of their land permit renewals, other villagers from Moothoor East were told that their renewals would be processed in due time.

In addition to the resettled people lacking renewals, 314 families have also lost their agricultural lands in the so-called economic zone acquisition carried out by the Rajapaksa regime.

The land-owners from Champoor have complained to the members of a coordinating committee of the Tamil National Alliance, which visited them on Monday.

The TNA committee members had no solution other than telling the residents that they would bring the matter to the attention of Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan, who is controlling the affairs of the TNA along with TNA Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran.

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