E.M. Manoj
KALPETTA
Owning a house is still a distant dream for the landslip victims in the Anamala tribal hamlet under the Sugandhagiri dairy project at Pookode in Wayanad, owing to the alleged negligence of some senior officials of the Tribal Development Department.
As many as 16 tribal families of the area have been living in a temporary relief camp set up at Pookode in August 2018 after they lost their houses and property in the landslip.
Anamala hamlet is a part of the former Pookode dairy project set up by the government by the end of the 1970s to rehabilitate tribespeople who were living in bondage. As many as 110 tribal families were rehabilitated and provided 5 acres of land each under the project.
Veluchi Karappan, 76, a tribeswoman of the camp, said, “While other families got cultivable land under the project, we got uncultivable land on the ecologically fragile hill top. Our houses and property and the road connected to the hilltop were completely destroyed in the landslip,” she said. “Though we had been shifted to the temporary relief camp opened at the Model Residential School (MRS) for tribal children and later to the temporary shed, thatched with tin sheets, they were yet to get the houses offered by the authorities, she said.
Life in the congested camp was miserable and close to 90 members of the 16 families have been living under a single roof during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
The district administration in January 2021 directed the District Nirmiti Kendra to construct houses for the victims on the land that was allotted to rehabilitate tribespeople.
Though the Kendra started construction works and spent ₹20 lakh, it halted the work after the intervention by some senior officials of the Tribal Resettlement Development Mission, K. Vellan, a tribal activist, said.
They claimed that the land was allotted for the Model Residential School and the house construction works for the victims could not be permitted. Though the principal secretary of the Tribal Development Department had issued a directive recently to the director of the department to allow construction works and find a suitable piece of land for the MRS near the area, the director was yet adopt a positive stance, he said.
