While 600,000 people in the peninsula are starving due to the closure of the A9 highway, the people in the Kathiravelli area who sought refuge there following the violence in the east face a humanitarian crisis.

Most of the displaced people in this area live in refugee camps, while some live with their relatives. The humanitarian crisis in vaharai is also due to the closure of a land route. As a result of the closure, there is no way of dispatching food commodities. Since safe drinking water is brought from outside, the supply of the drinking water is also affected by the closure of the road. They face a human crisis in which they have neither the food to eat nor safe drinking water to drink.

Since they live in refugee camps in large numbers, they are likely to be affected by infectious diseases. The only mobile medical service that had been available at the Vaharai hospital under the auspicious of Italian Red Cross Society has also been suspended for the last three weeks. The people in this area face an eminent death due to scarcity of food, safe drinking water and medicine due to the closure of the land route to Vaharai.

It is the duty of the government to open this land route and ensure a supply of essential food items, medicine and water to this area.

An English translation of the Editorial in Thinakural, a Tamil daily, based in Colombo

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