CHENNAI: After having knocked the door of every possible bureaucrat in the last 15 years, tsunami survivor V. Shanmugavel who was allotted 2.5 cents of land by the government in December 2016 is once again put into hardship as the NGO that has finally agreed to build a house on the land said it could only build a room with a partition for his family of seven.
On that fateful December 26 in 2004, when Shanmugavel, who was a fisherman, was resting in his hut very near to the coast in Kanathur village, the tsunami washed him away and buried him in the sand.
Though he survived, the catastrophe has punctured his stomach at several spots and damaged his liver and kidneys, meaning that he could not work for the rest of his life.
“I got the rehabilitation relief promised by late CM J. Jayalalithaa in 2004, only in the last month of 2016. Aid India gave a nod when I went through Arappor Iyakkam,” said Shanmugavel.
When contacted, relief coordinator, K. Swaminathan said they have built 220 homes for the needy in Tamil Nadu so far.
“The room will have a partition for the bedroom and an attached kitchen with a roof made of GI sheet. It would be 11 feet long and 18 feet wide,” he said.
Aid India has no plans to build bigger homes as all beneficiaries would ask for a similar home, increasing the budget and bringing down the number of beneficiaries.
