Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Children show that sensitivity is not a dead word

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan had visitors of an unusual kind at the Assembly on Wednesday — about half-a-dozen schoolchildren and their teacher from the Chennamangallur Higher Secondary School at Mukkom in Kozhikode who came to plead with him to do the best the Government can for the endosulfan victims of Kasaragod.

The children, all studying in the Plus One and Plus Two classes, came armed with a memorandum prepared after a visit to the endosulfan-hit villages of Kasaragod under a programme that they had named as `This Onam with Endosulfan Victims.' They sought urgent assistance for several individual victims besides measures to provide a healing touch to the villages where disease and death have been stalking consequent on endosulfan spraying for years.

"We knew he had visited the endosulfan victims and the affected villages, but we still thought we owed it to poor people to call on the Chief Minister and apprise him about what we saw there. And we are happy with the way he responded when we met him today," said Shaheen K., a member of the children's group. Twenty- five students and four teachers from Cocoon Nature Club of the school had visited the endosulfan victims with food articles worth Rs.15,000 and clothes worth Rs.8,000, a small gesture but, as the memorandum said, a great relief for the poverty-stricken families.

And poverty is the main point that they tried to impress upon the Chief Minister through their memorandum. It says: "We saw acute poverty in most homes that we visited. When we reached there with food articles, many of them were worried what they would do for Onam. Many of them said it was the first time that they had received some such assistance. The Government must take effective steps to remove poverty in the area."

Their other `demands' included establishment of a special school to teach the mentally challenged children, a judicial inquiry to fix responsibility for the endosulfan fiasco, declaration of entire Kasaragod as pesticide-free, formulation of a special welfare scheme for the endosulfan victims, if necessary, by issuing a special stamp and collecting funds from school children through their sale and creation of a facility to provide special medical care to the victims `most of who cannot even think of expert medical care under their present financial situation'.

"We had visited Abbas who was suffering from brain tumour. We felt very sad on learning about his death the other day. Urgent financial assistance should be provided to Abbas' family who spent lakhs on his treatment... Shahina, daughter of Abdul Khader of Aloor, is waiting in trepidation for the arrival of death, which had snatched away her brother, in their still-to-be finished home. The assistance you gave them has not helped even to pay off their debt. They must be given urgent help to complete their home... There must be a det

Apart from Shaheen, the delegation comprised Rashid P.K., Anseem A., Noushaba, Sakhiya Muhiyuddin Abdulla, Fathima S.M., Shyja S. and their teacher Kamaruddin S.

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