Colombo, February 19; The High Commissioner of India Santosh Jha joined the President of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe in a ceremony to virtually launch the construction of 1300 houses being built under Phase-IV of Indian Housing Project (IHP) in 45 plantation estates across 10 Districts of Sri Lanka.
The launch took place in the presence of several dignitaries at the President’s Secretariat in Colombo on 19 February.
The Government of India shall construct 10,000 houses for plantation workers under this Phase of IHP, which is spread across Sri Lanka’s six different Provinces.
It may be recalled that the announcement regarding Phase – IV of IHP was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to the plantation regions of Sri Lanka in May 2017. The foundation stone for this Phase of IHP was laid virtually on 2 November 2023 by Nirmala Sitharaman, the Indian Finance Minister along with President Ranil Wickremesinghe during the former’s visit to Sri Lanka.
The Government of India’s total commitment under the flagship IHP currently stands at 60,000 houses. In the first two phases, 46,000 houses were built covered in Northern and Eastern Provinces. Phase-III under which 4000 houses are being built for plantation workers are at the verge of completion.
The Indian origin Tamil community and plantation regions have been of specific focus under the Government of India’s development cooperation partnership with Sri Lanka. The overall portfolio of grant projects alone stands at more than SLR 30 billion. In addition to 14,000 houses, another landmark project is the construction of a multi- specialty hospital in Dickoya. A multi-sectoral package of SLR 3 billion was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2023, during the visit of President Ranil Wickremesinghe to India, in order to mark 200 years of arrival of Indian origin Tamil community to Sri Lanka.
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