The National Housing Authority has allocated funds to complete 2,844 abandoned houses in the Northern and Eastern Provinces under a programme branded “Apé Gedara — Sobana Jīwitayak” (“A Place of Our Own, A Beautiful Life”), Deputy Minister of Housing, Construction and Water Supply T.B. Sarath said on Monday.
Speaking on an observation tour of housing and water-supply projects in the two provinces, Mr Sarath said many of the unfinished houses dated to a 2015–2019 cycle in which beneficiaries received an initial Rs. 100,000 allocation but no follow-on funding to complete construction, leaving thousands of partly built shells across the region, Daily Mirror reported.
Under the new programme, the Resettlement Division has earmarked Rs. 2 million per house for the completion of 2,500 dwellings, with cheques being issued for the first phase. The Housing Development Authority is constructing a further 1,000 units alongside the Resettlement Division’s pipeline, bringing the combined commitment to about 3,500 homes once both tracks run their course.
The tour focused on Kappachi village in Settikulam, Vavuniya, one of the resettlement zones where the unfinished houses are concentrated. The two provinces continue to carry the largest backlog of post-conflict housing need in the country, alongside more recent demand created by Cyclone Ditwah.
The reactivation sits alongside the broader Ditwah housing programme, which has channelled cheques for the first phase of Badulla housing reconstruction, is being coordinated by a Prime Minister’s task force on Ditwah housing payments and is one strand of a wider Cyclone Ditwah religious-site and housing restoration rollout. An expert committee has also been tracking the Rs. 11.26 billion legacy of the 2015–2019 NHDA cycle that left the current backlog.
