JEDDAH, 17 January 2007 — The Saudi Charity Campaign (SCC) will sign an agreement with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Jan. 20 to establish a model housing city in Sri Lanka at a cost of SR38.74 million to accommodate the country’s tsunami victims.
The housing city to be named after Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will have 500 houses, two schools, a clinic, a mosque, a playground and a shopping complex, according to Saeed Al-Harithy, head of the Saudi charity.
He said under the agreement to be signed in Riyadh, the SCC would finance the project, which is estimated to cost SR38,739,278. He said the King Abdullah Model City would be established in Ampara, some 300 km from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.
Al-Harithy described the housing city as one of the largest relief projects to be implemented by Saudi Arabia in Asia to alleviate the suffering of people who became homeless as a result of the tsunami that battered two-thirds of Sri Lanka’s coastline, killing 35,322 people and leaving 516,150 homeless.
Mohammed Mahmud Al-Ali, Saudi ambassador in Colombo, said the Kingdom would construct 1,000 houses in the tsunami-affected areas, which would include 500 within the proposed city and the rest in Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Hambantota districts.
Saudi Arabia signed another agreement with the Sri Lankan government for the construction of 100 housing units for tsunami victims in Hambantota. Yousef Bakheet Rahmah, regional director of Saudi Charity Campaign, and Sri Lankan Minister of Housing Ferial Ashroff were the signatories to the agreement.
During its second phase, another 160 housing units would be constructed at Hambantota. In the third stage, 340 houses would be built in Trincomalee and Batticaloa, Al-Ali said.
Following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, a massive tsunami struck Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, 2004. Tsunami waves are usually triggered by seismic disturbances — coastal earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or undersea landslides — that jolt the ocean floor.
Tremors under the sea displace ground surface, sending the water outward in concentric circles from its epicenter. The result is a deep wave, stretching from the sea’s surface to the floor that travels horizontally at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour and reaches heights of 50 to 100 feet.
