SR LANKA: People in Northern Jaffna face food and fuel shortages as life with recent outbreak of fresh fighting between the army and Tamil rebels

Life in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka is once again proving hard for locals caught up in the effects of fresh fighting between the army and Tamil Tiger rebels. Fuel shortages mean most people can't run their cars, many buses are cancelled. Some three-wheel rickshaw taxis are running on kerosene, but many resort to getting around by bicycle. Electricity supplies have been patchy for lack of fuel. Residents must stay indoors between 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and watch with trepidation as armoured personnel carriers and army trucks bristling with rifles screech through the streets. Two decades of war destroyed most of the infrastructure, but the peninsula saw rapid development during the four and half year ceasefire. But the outbreak of violence again has seen progress suddenly halted. Daily life is sliding back into a struggle for survival. Despite the shortages residents, hardened by the decades of civil war, are adapting to weeks under siege, but life is hard and prices of essential food items have sky rocketed. "We have no food to eat," complains labourer, M.Skandaraja, adding, "We don't have a problem with the government, our problem is with the traders. They are hoarding everything and selling in the black market for massive profits." Sales of non-esssential items have dropped dramatically, with shop owners complaining that they can hardly make a living. "They say no business. Maybe 1,000 rupees for one day's sales (before the violence broke out) Now it is less than one hundred rupees per day. Nobody is worried about other than food items," said K.Rajadurai a TV and radio salesman. Thousands of people displaced by the worst fighting between the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) since a 2002 truce are living in churches and schools on the peninsula. Locals are now praying the Tigers and the government stick to their to pledge to resume long-stalled peace talks. "The current situation can not be left as it is. Everybody must get together and find a solution for this problem" said V.Vignanathan. The military is shipping emergency stocks of rice and dry rations to the peninsula -- which is cut off from the rest of Sri Lanka by rebel lines -- but aid workers say it is not enough. Since the only road linking the peninsula to the rest of the country was closed down when fighting erupted last month, food items have to be shipped from the capital of Colombo. Government official Kandiah Ganesh, Jaffna's top civil servant, thinks the peninsula has up to three weeks' supply of food after the arrival of a third shipment of rice, lentils and other essentials. But milk and dairy products are very scarce. Items like sugar have risen by up to 300 per cent in price.

ITN Source | September 25, 2006

Tags:. .proving. .tigers. .stick. .decades. .everybody