SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND COMPENSATION IN COMPULSORY LAND ACQUISITION: DOSE IT MATTERS ON SATISFACTION

Abstract

Compensating for different types of losses are continuously experiencing in Sri Lanka due to types of disasters or compulsory land acquisition. The land Acquisition Act No. 09 of 1950 makes the provision to acquire the lands from private landowners for the public interest and to pay the monetary compensation to recover the losses. The National Involuntary Resettlement Policy (NIRP) was intended to address involuntary resettlement, integrating land acquisition and payment of compensation. However, there is a real distrust about satisfaction of the victims on the end results mainly based on many aspects. In fact, the findings vary from place to place. Therefore, this paper aims to critically analyze the factors representing of the social sustainability
concept in compensation procedure of compulsory land acquisition of Sri Lanka, expressly reviewing the reservoir development project of Yan Oya and its resettlement community. Fivepoint Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect data from thirty re-settlers selected from three locations on nine criteria. Further, six prominent community leaders were interviewed for
further confirmation. The findings reveal those five factors representing social sustainability aspect were successful to some extent, while there were significant inconsistencies amongst assessed components within individual cases. Hence, the study reveals that pure monetary compensation process was unsuccessful since it represents the inadequacy to cover all losses of
victims. Thus, for a coverage of total loss a resettling strategy is essential while with more concerns to the social sustainability aspects.

Keywords: Compensation, Compulsory land acquisition, Resettlement strategy, Satisfaction,
Social sustainability.