With lasting, dignified peace :

Modern human settlement programme launched

“Socha Sabbha Dadao hoti Yo Dadathi Upassayan”

“Donation of a house equals donation of all other worldly possessions”. It was Gautama Buddha, a greatest philosopher and religious founder who lived 2,600 years who made remarkable statement in one of his discourses emphasizing the need of housing for mankind. Today, the need for housing facilities is felt more intensely than ever before.

When we look back the Human Settlement Programme established in 1978, it is clear that most of the goals set under that noble programme have been already achieved during the past 32 years. Yet there remains a huge task left when considered in relation to the socio-economic and cultural expectations of six billion more world population today. In determining the quality of life of any community in the world, the qualitative levels of dwelling places are considered as one of the major criteria.

Therefore one of the greatest challenges faced by the world community today is how to enhance and improve the quality of life of those who live in low quality and substandard dwelling places. We, Sri Lankans are working with a sense of commitment and strong determination towards overcoming this challenge. The dignified and lasting peace established by us after defeating separatist terrorism which plagued our motherland for more than 30 years has opened new avenues for us to achieve those social goals.

Human settlements

However, it should be emphasized here that we are motivated and encouraged in achieving those housing goals by President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s incomparable leadership given to the humanitarian operations in defeating separatist terrorism by which it has proved to the world that honourable peace can be achieved only by defeating terrorism and not by surrendering to terrorism.

We believe that peace is the most significant factor for the existence of human settlements.

Where there is fear, the peaceful existence of human settlement is threatened. Therefore, we are pleased to state that we are now launching a modern human settlement programmes as a nation with lasting and dignified peace.

Fifty one percent of the population in Colombo, the commercial capital of Sri Lanka lives in substandard dwelling places without the minimum facilities necessary for decent human living.

According to our estimates and available statistics, the present housing need of Sri Lanka is one million housing units. Also, out of 50 million existing housing stock 25 percent consists of temporary or partially built houses.

One of the major reasons for the deteriorating conditions of the quality of urban settlement is the dramatic increase of urban population due to migration from rural areas to metropolitan.

Also, lack of lands in urban areas, high cost of lands, constant floods of low-lying areas of the metropolitan, high cost of conventional construction methods, complex administrative procedures adopted by commercial banks in approving housing loans and higher interest rates of housing loans worsen this situation.

However, the construction of houses by higher and middle-level income groups has increased recently due to reduction of interest rates. Nevertheless, we believe that more concessions should be provided to the lower strata of the population.

The duty and obligation of providing housing and settlements to the needy which is considered a fundamental right of the population was left to be fulfilled by the market forces under the open market economic policy introduced in the 1980s in Sri Lanka. Under this policy, budgetary allocations for the provision of houses and settlements to the needy persons were gradually reduced.

As a result, direct construction by the government and provision of concessionary housing loan schemes too were dramatically dropped. The end-result of that entire policy shift is the gradual change of government’s role of housing-provider to that of a facilitator and finally regulator.

Housing facilities

Under the regulator role, the government has taken a number of measures including amendments of acts and enactments pertaining to the provision of housing facilities and transferring ownership of houses built by the government to the public. In addition the government has provided tax concession, land and administrative assistance to the private sector construction in order to encourage and motivate them.

However the growth of private sector construction has not increased, for example, in the last year, private sector has constructed and developed 620 luxury and semi-luxury housing units under 50 schemes in Sri Lanka and out of this, they have sold 370 units only.

Accordingly, the major reason for inefficiency and slow growth of private sector construction is high construction cost.

To be continued