Census for LTTE-held areas

Official sources said preparations for the enumeration8217; were already underway with village level government authorities in the process of drawing up lists of families living in the Vanni. These lists will be inspected by officials of the Census and Statistics department next month.

So far, the LTTE did not allow such verification and the government, which sends food supplies for people living in rebel-controlled areas, accused the Tamil Tigers of exaggerating the numbers in order to siphon off supplies for themselves.

It refused to believe the estimates of its ownfunctionaries in the Vanni on suspicion that they either co-operated with the LTTE in preparing swollen lists or were intimidated into doing so.

The most immediate consequence of this was the drastic 50 per cent cut in the supply of government free rations to the thousands of refugees in the Vanni.

Government Agents GAs of the four districts in the Vanni estimated that there were 4.24 lakh people in the region, of which nearly 3.39 lakh were refugees, or Internally Displaced People IDPs and entitled to free rations. The four districts of Mannar, Mullaithivu, Killinochchi and Vavuniya saw a huge influx of people from Jaffna in 1995 following the military takeover of the peninsula. Later, as the war shifted to the Vanni, thousands more were displaced within these four districts.

However, the government disagreed with its GAs, preferring to believe defence ministry estimates of 2.38 lakh refugees in the Vanni.

The Tamil Tigers charged the government with deliberately starving the population of theVanni but the government maintained there would be sufficient stocks if the LTTE did not to hijack supplies.

Following the agreement on the enumeration, the LTTE will allow officials of the Census department to travel to the Vanni with the UNHCR and verify the numbers for themselves. In return, the government has restored about 80 per cent of the food supply. The rest will depend on the results of the census itself.

The agreement was reached after members of a recently set up government task force on human disaster management8217; visited the Vanni to assess the situation in the region. The task force was set up last year by President Chandrika Kumaratunga following criticism that the government was ignoring the human crisis created by the on-going war of attrition between it and the LTTE.

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