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8 Orissa refugees escape from State shelter

KOCHI: Eight of the 39 Kandhamal refugees sheltered in the Social Welfare Department’s one-day home at Kakkanad near here have escaped from the home. They are believed to have left for Orissa.

Leaving behind a note saying that they needed to go home urgently, the eight left late Monday night from the one-day home where they had stayed for over six months after fleeing from the anti-Christian riots in the Kandhamal district of Orissa in August-September last. The eight — two married couples, the daughter of one couple, and three young women — are believed to have escaped after 10 p.m. The 39 refugees, who consisted of young girls and elderly persons, had been banned from going out of the one-day home’s campus as the authorities had feared for their lives.

The refugees — all tribes people, peasants and Christians — have long been demanding the State government to send them back home. They had sent petitions to different government functionaries, including Ministers, for permission to return to their home villages in Orissa. Bureaucratic apathy and differences of opinion between Ministers are said to have kept their petitions in deep freeze. A couple of weeks ahead of the April 16 elections in Orissa, the refugees had sought permission to leave so that they could vote. In fact, Rs.50,000 had reportedly been sanctioned from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund towards their transportation expenses. However, nothing came out of it. “I am sure these people must have escaped out of sheer frustration,” a source familiar with the refugees’ woes told The Hindu. days to let him go as his mother was in death bed.

Fleeing from the communal carnage, 50 Christian refugees had arrived in Kerala in end-October with the help of a human rights organisation. The State government decided to treat them as refugees and rehabilitate them until the situation improved in their home district.

The Chief Minister formally received them and asked the Social Welfare Department to give them shelter. While 39 were accommodated at the one-day home at Kakkanad, the rest were put up in the department’s children’s home and old-age home in Thrissur. However, the department provides only Rs.15 per person a day for their upkeep, which is quite insufficient. Some Christian charity agencies provide them food, clothes and other daily needs.

It is alleged that the main reason for the long delay in deciding the fate of the refugees has been the differences of opinion over the issue between the Chief Minster’s office and the office of the Minister of Health and Social Welfare.

Meanwhile, it is said that the Kandhamal police have registered a case against a Malayali human rights activist who facilitated the refugees’ arrival in Kerala on a charge of kidnapping them from their villages.

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