Gammadda - a journey of voices unheard and forgotten

Colombo (News1st) -  The Gammadda door-to-door teams met with villagers whose existence has been overlooked by the responsible authorities. The villagers living in Puttlam, Killinochchi and Badulla districts were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Gammadda door to door teams to share their hardships. The Gammadda team visited the village of Kevil in the Maradan Karni Divisional Secretariat Division in Jaffna. The responsible authorities seem to be blind to the villagers who live in slum houses. The dog cages in the city of Colombo has more space than most of the houses the villagers of Kevil. Roads are built and carpeted in Colombo on a daily basis but in this village, the access road has not been renovated in several years. Their sand road has never even seen a layer of tar. Travelling on a tar road is another unfulfilled dream of the villagers in Kevil. During the dry season, the villagers travel on foot and in monsoon they get to places on a boat. The lack of a proper road is a major inconvenience for the villagers of Kevil. Killinochchi is the closest town to this village. The District Secretariat office, schools and the hospital are all the way in Killinochchi. They do not have water for their crops. They barely have water to quench their thirst. The only request of the villagers living in Kevil is that a proper road is constructed to access the town. That Gammadda team toured the Paranthan, Jaffna, Killinochchi, Kevil, and Kettakadu. Another  Gammadda team toured the Puttlam district in the search of the voiceless and forgotten people. The villagers living in Norochcholai, Wanathaviluwa, and Serekuliya are not given a fair price for their harvest. The villagers are not even given fertilizer compensation. They do not have water to nourish their crops. They do not even have water to moisten their throats. Most villagers living in these villages have contracted kidney diseases by drinking well water. Even though the villagers have informed the relevant officials about this, their pleas have fallen into deaf ears. Meanwhile, the villager's living in Mailankulama, Wanatawiluwa, Tewa Nuwara and the Pradeepagama are caught in between the human-elephant conflict. The villagers in "Angaharu Lokaya" in the Badulla district survive amidst a number of hardships. The villagers of Galkada and Damalamulla have named this village "Angaharu Lokaya" loosely translated as "outer-space". This village gets this extraordinary name because it gets no help from anyone outside. The villagers of "Angaharu Lokaya" have to fend for themselves through agriculture. However, it is ironic that there is no water to cultivate. The people in this village built a sluice gate in the Kakarana tank in order to obtain water for their cultivation. However, due to the lack of a gate in the sluice canal, the water dries up. Even though a channel was built to obtain water for their cultivation, that too wasn't completed. These problems have left the villagers in misery.