Praja Sankalpa Yatra Diary, Day 116: Diarrhoea Deaths Reflect TDP Neglect Of Healthcare
Uppalapadu, Guntur District: This morning a group of girls came running through the fields, with men and women behind them, to greet me on seeing me pause on my Padayatra to speak to them. These girls, covered from head to toe in dust, their hands soiled, gathered around me, their faces radiating cheer. I asked them if they had not attended school. It pained me to learn that they dropped out of school and started working. I came to know that all of them, the entire family worked as farm labourers because of their dire circumstances. Even one person could not afford to sit at home. A child could not dream of going to school! These children wanted to go to school badly. Their parents too wanted their children to study. All of them came from Kurnool and Anantapur, they admitted. It was because they could not find any work there that they had to migrate. They were being paid Rs.200 a day.
These children who should have been at school are instead working as farm labourers! To ensure that such a fate does not befall any family, the scheme, “Amma Vodi”, is a part of YSRCP’s vision for the future. My conviction to get it implemented when Rajanna Rajyam is ushered in, became stronger and deeper. They would not have had to face this situation if only the employment guarantee scheme had been implemented with sincerity by the TDP regime.
Girl students from DIET college in Chilakaluripeta met me and explained their problems to me. They told me how they suffered because of government neglect. These students joined the D. Ed. course in August 2016. Twenty months later the exams for the first year had not been held and they were uncertain about when the exams for the second year would be conducted. They told me that the government which was in deep slumber for years had suddenly woken up after I raised the issue. It permitted them to write the DET exam. “Anna, because of this, with the belief that you will take up our problem once again and it will then get resolved, we have come to you.” They expressed their anguish at being denied the opportunity to pursue DSE.
I can empathise with their condition. After having conducted the DIET-SET exam and facilitated admissions into colleges through counselling, if the government now does not conduct exams and closes avenues of employment open to these students, won’t their future get severely impacted? When about 70,000 students are affected across the state by this development, it is shocking to see the indifference of the Chandrababu government to the issue. What kind of callousness and neglect is this?
While my Padayatra was near Uppalapadu, families of diarrhoea victims, who had come from Guntur met me. They were accompanied by their relatives. “Our family members lost their lives on account of government neglect. These were innocent lives lost for no fault of theirs.” I was shaken to the core after this interaction. For people to die of diarrhoea because of drinking contaminated water is unpardonable. This itself is an example of The TDP government’s incompetence. It shows the neglect healthcare has suffered at the hands of this government and is a reflection of how little it cares for the lives of the people.
I have a question for the chief minister—isn’t the government squarely responsible for the deaths in Guntur because of diarrhoea? Is it not true that the number of victims was lowered and the figures fudged to reduce the amount of compensation to be paid? Isn’t this inhuman? What answer do you have to people who accuse the government of being directly responsible for these diarrhoea deaths?
