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| Saturday, 24 July 2004 |
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The Sri Lankan Government and the World Bank yesterday signed the agreement for providing US$64.7 million funding to rehabilitate and bring normalcy to conflict affected communities of North-East through the Second North-East Irrigated Agriculture Project (NEIAP II). This is a follow-on project to a similar initiative financed by the World Bank from 2000 to date aimed at restoring agricultural production and related income opportunities to rehabilitate and develop village communities. "To sustain the peace process, it is vital that the people of the North-East should be assisted to rebuild their social networks and livelihoods. The first project supported this objective even as the conflict was raging, and this follow-on expanded operation will deepen the process," said. Peter Harrold, World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka. "We sincerely hope that a successful implementation of this project will contribute significantly to assist Sri Lanka to move towards a permanent peace," he added. P. Kohilarani, Treasurer of the Women's Rural Development Society, Poovarasan Kulam village of Vavuniya, is one beneficiary of the first NEIAP project. Speaking at last week's 50th anniversary celebrations of the World Bank, she described the trails and tribulations undergone by her village during the conflict era. She explained how the ceasefire in 2002, brought her village under the first NEIAP project to form the Women's Rural Development Society and how the small individual loans provided by the project helped the widows and other women in the village to start up income generating activities and to set up and operate a revolving village fund. She described that 85 widowed women who are now heads of their households who used the shade of a tree to hold meetings now have a meeting hall, reliable irrigation water for cultivation and safe drinking water, and the ability to work together as a team to strengthen their community. Kohilarani also spoke about the usefulness of the various capacity building training undergone under this project and expressed a fervent hope that similar development work will be extended to other villages in the region. According to Nihal Fernando, World Bank's task Team Leader of the project the first project pioneered international development assistance to the North-East. Approximately 50,000 households and 250,000 people in about 380 villages benefited during the last four years," he said. Fernando said as a result "many thousands more people affected by conflict are now ready and eager to work with this program, and we are looking forward to bringing its benefits to even more villages than in the first phase." Many communities that have undergone much hardship during the years of conflict will benefit from the Village Rehabilitation and Development, (US$53 million) component of the project. This major component will support reviving farming and strengthening community-based organisations, while rehabilitating essential social and economic infrastructure and facilities. Vulnerable people, such as, internally displaced people, land mine victims, people with war-induced deficient abilities, widows, women-headed households will also benefit from livelihood support activities and special development activities to be implemented under this component. The project will also finance farmer organisations capacity building and empowerment and strengthening of agricultural support services (US$ 5 million) and essential dam safety repairs and improvements, and urgent rehabilitation/improvements to major irrigation, drainage, and conveyance/feeder canals of selected major irrigation/drainage schemes (US$ 16.7 million). The proposed project would be implemented over six years commencing January 2005. The International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's concessionary lending affiliate, is providing the US$ 64.7 million credit to the Sri Lanka Government on standard IDA terms, with 40 years maturity and a 10-year grace period. |
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