OneWorld.net (U.S.)

NEW DELHI, Dec 16 (OneWorld) - Nearly 60 percent of southern India's tsunami-affected citizens are living in temporary shelters two years after the disaster, a local group said this week, blaming the housing shortcomings on government apathy and poor construction efforts by both the government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In a press conference to mark the release of the report "Do People's Voices Matter? The Human Right to Participation in Post-Tsunami Housing Construction," the New Delhi-based Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) alleged this week that more than half of the nearly 150,000 people displaced from 33 fishing hamlets on the south Indian coast are living in deplorable conditions.

The tsunami, one of the world's worst natural disasters, devastated coastal countries in South and Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004. It also evoked an unprecedented outpouring of grief and sympathy and led to magnanimous donations for rescue and relief efforts.

"We found violations of human rights related to housing, work, health, food, water, and security in the states of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry," said UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Miloon Kothari. "The government of Tamil Nadu seems to have relinquished its responsibility of rehabilitating tsunami-affected people because permanent houses are only being funded and coordinated by NGOs."

Highlighting government callousness towards the displaced people, HLRN associate director Shivani Chaudhry said, "the government is not allowing fishing communities to set up permanent houses within 500 meters of the coastline...even as commercial development is taking place within that space. The Tamil Nadu government is even evicting fishing communities from the Marina Beach in Chennai even though this takes away jobs and employment from fishing folk."

Quoting state government statistics, HLRN alleged that of the proposed 54,000 houses the government wanted to provide, only 12,000 have been constructed.

"The houses have not been built because the government has not even acquired land," Chaudhry said.

Particularly discouraging for Chaudhry were the current living conditions of those who remain homeless.

"Most people are living in temporary shelters that are made of tin sheets and thatched roofs. These do not have privacy and are flooded during rains; there are no sanitation facilities and diseases like chikungunya have spread in these shelters.

"There is no electricity for shelters in Kanyakumari and many shelters in Pondicherry are almost on the road, making them extremely unsafe for children. Even well-made houses do not have bathrooms or kitchens or have been constructed so far from the coastline that fishing communities have no use for them," lamented Chaudhry.

Kothari of the UN stressed that if the tsunami-displaced people had been involved in designing and constructing homes, enormous amounts of money spent on permanent houses would not have gone to waste.

"Many houses are lying vacant because the people have rejected them," he said. "Some of them have a side entrance which is considered inauspicious while others are double storied; therefore fisher folk do not find these practical."

In places where NGOs allowed people flexibility to build their houses or took their views into consideration, Kothari stressed, people are generally happy with their dwellings.

"In one such example, an NGO gave money to women in Nagapattinam to construct houses and these have a high level of acceptability within the fishing communities," the UN official said.

Kothari also criticized the national government for not evolving a concrete compensation policy for tsunami victims and said that large-scale displacements are taking place across India.

"Whether it is disaster-related displacement, market-related displacement, or displacements due to urban projects," he said, "people are being rendered homeless all over the country."