Colombo: India has agreed to provide USD 60 million to renovate the port at Kankesanthurai in Jaffna district in northern Sri Lanka, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said Friday.
Dissanayake was addressing a gathering at an event near Jaffna, the cultural capital of the minority Tamil community, when he made the announcement.
Noting that Jaffna district, with its beautiful coastline and many attractions, has a high potential for tourism development, he said: “We plan to address the shortcomings at Palaly Airport and renovate it. We will begin work at the Kankesanthurai (KKS) Port very soon, and the Government of India has agreed to assist USD 60 million for this purpose.”
Dissanayake said that his government is already implementing a programme to bring broad development to the Northern Province and improve the living standards of its people.
The India-Sri Lanka Joint Statement of December 16, 2024 after the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Dissanayake in New Delhi had mentioned that the two sides would “explore the possibility of jointly working on rehabilitation of Kankesanthurai port in Sri Lanka, which will be implemented with grant assistance from the Government of India.”
Friday, Dissanayake was attending the launch of the 2026 National Housing Programme, ‘A Place to Belong – A Beautiful Life’, for 31,218 families nationwide, including 2,500 war-displaced families from the North and East, at Chavakachcheri, near Jaffna.
During the first phase of the programme, the government is to provide LKR 2 million per house for 800 war-displaced families in the Jaffna district. He stressed that the housing issues of all those displaced by the war will be resolved during his term of office.
“A large number of houses were damaged during the war. However, despite the prolonged time frame, those houses have not been fully rebuilt. I know that the people living in Jaffna District were displaced during the war.
“They remain displaced even after the war … without a home or a place of their own. It is not just for families to live for a long time without a house. Therefore, we will resolve the housing problems of all those displaced by the war, during our term,” Dissanayake said.
Sri Lanka has a mixed demography and Tamils, both ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian-origin Tamils, mostly in north and eastern parts of the island nation.
LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader V Prabhakaran.
“There were conflicts for a long time. None of us benefited from them. What did those conflicts leave us with? Families who lost their homes, children who lost their mothers and fathers, an economy that completely collapsed, relatives and friends who were lost. People in both the North and the South became victims of this war,” he said.
“Sinhala people were incited to gain power; Tamil people were incited to gain power. Such was the nature of that racist politics,” the president pointed out.
“I will give you one guarantee: I assure you that in our country, whether in the North, South, East or any other region and whether against Sinhalese, Tamils or Muslims, we will not allow racism in any form.
“We want a country where everyone lives together in brotherhood and harmony. We also want a good economy and a life filled with enjoyment and happiness,” Dissanayake said.
PTI
