FOLLOWING are extracts from an interview given by minister Mrs. Ferial Ashraff
Q - How could Muslim aspirations be met in a political solution that follow the defeat of the LTTE?
A - Just like any other community, Muslims also have their own aspirations. One is to be treated equally. No community in Sri Lanka should be treated as second class citizens. All should have equal rights. When talking about rights, here in Sri Lanka all talk only about rights, not responsibilities.
We have responsibilities towards the country as countrymen. It is very nice to talk about it theoretically but in real practice, we may find it is very difficult to achieve all these.
Since we had suffered for 30 long years, lost so many lives and shed so much of blood I think this is high time that we change our attitudes. We certainly have gone wrong somewhere. Otherwise this beautiful country would not have gone through that much of agony.
When we go through the history of this country we can see that politicians had brought laws merely for their own political gain. We have to get over all those. No more wars for Sri Lanka.
We do not need any more wars. What ended was the last war. We need a revolution.
A revolution of the mind. Unless we attain that, the story could continue to be sad.
Q - How can we march forward as one country and one nation?
A - The whole problem comes in when we think as Sinhala, Muslim, Tamil etc. This is not a problem that can be solved overnight because it was there for over 30 years.
The question is what is national in Sri Lanka? Do we have anything national in Sri Lanka? This is a question that bugs me a lot. Do we have something called a National Vote or is it divided into caste, creed, race and religion?
When we vote what do we look for in the candidate? Is it the ability of the person to deliver something good for the country or is it his or her caste, creed, race, religion etc?
As long as we have majorities and minorities we will not be able to have anything national. This division should be changed in the future. The plans are not only for the Muslim community. The plans are for the whole country. If we can think like one nation and one country even at this late juncture, we can change the destiny of Sri Lanka.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa was under enormous pressure while eradicating terrorism from the country and he had to walk forward in the middle of many hazards.
Q - What is the main responsibility of your Ministry?
A - The main responsibility of the Ministry which I hold is to facilitate and help the people to build a home for themselves. We don’t believe in building and handing over homes to them.
We find ways and means to save for a home and we get involved in saving for a home. We also get the help of various community based organisations and teams where they can learn how to save and how to build a house. We provide all required technical assistance free of charge. We also provide all the advice in relation to building a house. We give them a very small amount of money to start the project.
One may wonder what can be done with such a small amount of money. But the results of our program are excellent. We give this small amount of money to families who had given up forever the hope of building a house of their own.
When they receive our small financial assistance to start the project, they get encouraged.
Because of this, we find that this is a very successful way of assisting people to build their own homes.
But this is not so in the urban areas, especially in Colombo this method is not applicable at all. Since Sri Lanka is a small island, the land and space is very limited and especially in Colombo, people do not have their own lands.
For that problem the Government has a totally different plan.
We are building housing complexes and apartment complexes in urban areas. My main role is helping people in villages to build their own houses in their own lands. Most of them live in shacks and we assist them to have their own homes.
We are very happy with our progress. Apart from this, we have a revolving loan scheme. The Ministry’s budgetary allocation has been going down steadily because of the just ended war. The priorities had to be changed. We are now in the process of recovering loans which had been given during the last couple of years.
The loans we have already given is similar to a Fund. Because of these internal recoveries, we are capable of doing much even with a very small amount of funds received from the budget.
The concept of the National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) came during Minister Pieter Keuneman’s time and late President R. Premadasa gave a big boost to it. The NHDA has highly qualified and talented professionals.
This organisation is not just an office located in Colombo. It reaches down to the grassroot level. It has facilities to send its officers to any place located in difficult and remote areas.
This is a well experienced and very competent authority. Especially after the tsunami the NHDA supported people immensely to build homes. It was involved in building houses in the Eastern Province.
Q - Describe the progress made in the housing sector under your leadership?
A - Sri Lanka has a long backlog every year. Nuclear families are growing but space is not growing. But when you compare with most of the other countries, Sri Lanka is doing much better than them. In future we will need to build apartment complexes because of lack of land.
The NHDA is now in the process of preparing a ten year plan and looking into the availability of land.
First time since the inception of the NHDA, it has put into an inventory all the available lands belong to the NHDA.
So far the NHDA did not have a land inventory although it has many lands all over Sri Lanka.
Another ‘first’ achieved by the NHDA is the setting up of a proper monitoring system to find out whether the families that obtained housing loans actually built houses.
In the past housing loans had been given during election times but no houses were built. But under this new system there is a name, address and a house for every housing loan obtained from the NHDA.
The progress of the construction of each and every house will be monitored. Therefore housing loans will be fruitful and there will be a house built for every housing loan taken from the NHDA.
(Courtesy: Daily News)
