Posts filed under ‘Breakdown in Balangir’
Balangir administration to set up seasonal hostels for migrant kids
Following is a report from the http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/odisha/Balangir-Administration-to-Set-up-Seasonal-Hostels-for-Migrant-Kids/2015/12/19/article3185526.ece
BALANGIR: The district administration is all set to open seasonal hostels for children of migrant labourers.
At present, 101 hostels are functioning in the district where 3,070 children are staying. Last year, the administration had opened 106 centres in which 3,621 children were accommodated.
Sources said this year the State Government has set a target of 5,000 children of migrant workers for the district administration to be accommodated in the seasonal hostels. The hostels will be opened in Bangomunda, Turekela, Muribahal, Belpara, Patnagarh and Khaprakhol blocks of the district.
As per the guidelines, the survey for identification of migrant families will be conducted and a proposal will be submitted to the State Government for opening the hostels by the Education Department of the district. During their six to eight months stay at the hostels, education will be provided to them.
Sources said huge distress migration occurs every year from Balangir and other KBK districts to brick kilns of Andhra Pradesh due to lack of work after kharif crop.
The number of migrant workers is estimated to be around two lakh and the number of migrant children is around 25,000.
The district Child Welfare Committee (CWC) is also providing all technical support to the district administration in opening and management of the hostels.
District Project Coordinator of Sarva Sikshya Abhiyan (SSA) Dhananjay Mohapatra said seasonal hostels will be set up in the migration-prone villages before they migrate to other States.
Consultation meetings with migrating parents are going on to finalise locations for the proposed centres.
Similarly, recruitment of caretakers, village-level education coordinators and cook for hostels will be conducted soon, he added.
Employment scheme; a failure in Balangir
Following is a report from TNIE:
Lalit Bhoi of Badbanki village in Turekela block in the district has decided to migrate in search of job as he is not able to get work even after applying for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Similarly, Surdas Pradhan of Bijamal village in Muribahal block feels that he would migrate if he would not be able to get work under the flagship scheme soon.
Bhoi and Pradhan are not solitary instances of poverty stricken people unable to get the benefits of MGNREGS. In fact, the MGNREGS, aimed at providing employment to rural poor, has miserably failed in the district.
According to sources, 2,72,527 households in the district have been issued job cards. Out of them, 61,339 households applied for works in 2013-14 and 47,393 households have been provided work till now.
While in the present month, 5,904 households are engaged in work, 2,086 households have completed 100 days of work. Among those who completed 100 days of work, 463 households were linked to the housing schemes like Indira Awaas Yojana. According to latest estimate, about 68.2 per cent of the budget for the scheme has been spent till now including labour payment and construction work.
The major road blocks in implementation of MNREGS are non-payment and delayed payment of wages to the labourers and shortage of field staff for preparation of muster rolls. Sources said people are not getting work during lean period. They also alleged that the officials were providing work as per their whims and caprices.
As per a conservative estimate, more than one lakh people have migrated in search of livelihood from the district to other places in and outside the State. The district has also more than 1,000 certified bonded labourers.
According to a survey of Western Odisha Migration Network (WOMN), a network of civil society organisations and academicians working in the district, more than 80,000 people from Bangomunda, Turekela, Belpara, Muribahal, Saintala and Khaprakhol blocks have already migrated.
“Balangir is a poor and migration prone district. MGNREGS has all the ingredients to address labour migration due to acute poverty and unemployment. However, to realise the same, the administration needs to identify the vulnerable people and implement MGNREGS during the lean period. But it has failed to provide timely works as well as the payments,” said Jatin Kumar Patra, an activist working on the issue.
Project Director of Balangir DRDA Pabitra Mandal said the administration is taking steps to provide work in all the revenue villages. “We are preparing plans and very soon the works will start,” he said.
Couple die of starvation in Balangir district
Following report is from express-buzz.com:
PATNAGARH: Starvation has reportedly claimed two more lives in western Odisha. In a span of 13 hours, two deaths were reported in a family in Sargimunda village in Kandhenjhula gram panchayat of Belpada block in Balangir district. The two have been identified as Bishnu Majhi (42) and his 37-year-old wife Parbati. Bishnu was a migrant labourer. He had planned to migrate this year too but with Parbati taking ill, he had to cancel the plan.
While the five-member family comprising the couple and their three sons Katha (17), Tikelal (14) and Laba (9) had no other source of income, their eldest son Katha availed of a loan of ` 10,000 from a labour ‘sardar’ for treatment of his mother before leaving for Andhra Pradesh to work in a brick kiln.
But the loan money was not enough for treatment of Parbati and maintenance of the family. Sans food and treatment, Parbati died on December 8.
The following day, immediately after Bishnu completed Parbati’s final rites, he complained of illness and had to be admitted to the Patnagarh sub-divisional hospital. He breathed his last on December 9 night.
Villagers said that the couple were not keeping well for a long time due to malnutrition. The family has reportedly not received any BPL rice for the last three months.
The Belpada tehsildar Abhimanyu Majhi met the couple’s children on Tuesday to find out if they are covered under any social security measures.
No effect of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) on Balangir migration
Following is a report from HT:
Of the 72 students of Budhamunda Village Primary School in Belpada block, just half line up for morning prayers in their crumpled, unwashed uniform.
What about the rest?
“Many of my friends have migrated with their parents to work in brick kilns. I will also follow them in a few days,” said Dipakanta Pradhan (10), a student of class 3.
The scene was the same at an anganwadi (mother and child) centre in Tentulimunda village in the same block, more than 400 km southwest of Bhubaneswar, where just eight out of 25 children wait for their food to be served.
About 200 out of the 247 families in Tentulimunda migrated to work in brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh last year. This year, villagers said more would follow because of acute drought in the region and no sign of government-sponsored programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS).
Surveys by Western Orissa Migration Network (WOMN), a consortium of voluntary organisations, have revealed more than 150,000 people from Balangir migrate every year to work in brick kilns and construction sites of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. At least 45,000 of them are in the age group 1-14, and a majority of them do jobs specially designed for them in the kilns.
Talking to HT, Orissa women and child development minister Anjali Behera said she would ask the collector and SP of the district to ensure that neither the parents nor the children migrated.
“I will look into the matter seriously,” Behera said.
Balangir collector SN Dey said he was not aware of anybody migrating from the district so far. “We have told the people to wait for the poverty line survey, which will start soon. Programmes like mid-day meal (MDM), the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and MGNREGS are going on smoothly in the district,” he said.
Tentulimunda looks barren. Farmers have left many unharvested paddy fields for their cattle to graze because there is no point harvesting them.
According to the agriculture department figures, in most areas up 75% of the crop has been damaged due to severe drought.
“We have no option to migrate,” said Abhimanyu Bag (40).
What about the MGNREGS? They are few and far between, he said.
Last year, there were just two works. However, people prefer not to work in them. “Payment is very late. It takes five months to get your dues,” he said.
In Balangir, the CBI is probing irregularities in the MGNREGS in response to a Supreme Court order.
The migration of families, along with the children, defeats the purpose of central government-funded programmes like MDM and the ICDS in Balangir, ranked as one of the country’s most backward districts.
The allocation for MDM and the ICDS in 2010-11 in the district was more than R30 crore.
According to the 2001 census, Balangir has a population of more than 1.3 million, of whom more than 261,000 are covered under MDM and another 200,000 under the ICDS.
The 2011 census says Balangir has a provisional population of more than 1.6 million.
However, the figures of children covered under MDM and the ICDS stand unchanged.
Anganwadi workers maintain migration notebooks for listing the migrant families.
Teachers too usually mark migrant children absent. However, they complain most often their superiors put pressure on them not to do so because that would reflect the failure of MDM.
“So we strike a balance. If 50 students migrate, we list 20 just to save our jobs,” said a teacher on anonymity.
Spectre of drought haunts Balangir district: The Pioneer
Following article is from The Pioneer:
The spectre of drought has haunted the Balangir district this year, as the monsoon rain has turned truant, with the district hardly recording any significant rainfall both in the month of June and till mid-July.
The Kharif paddy cultivation of the district is totally dependent on the monsoon rainfall but it has been severely hit due to scant rainfall till date. There was shortage of paddy seeds and fertiliser this year but farmers had taken up the paddy cultivation with high hope of good rainfall. However, contrary to their expectations, the inadequate rainfall has withheld the agriculture operations.
According to official sources, against the normal average rainfall of 202.8 mm in June, the district received a rainfall of 105.5 mm, a 48 per cent deficit rainfall. Rather than any improvement, the situation continues to be depressing and till July 12 last, the district has received a rainfall of 64.5 mm against the normal rainfall average of 360 mm.
Against the target of paddy cultivation in 1,87,000 hectares of land, the cultivation has been taken up in 75,404 hectares only, barely on 40 per cent of land, said official sources. The irregularity of rain has further brought agriculture operations, now at various stages, to a grinding halt.
“We have noticed moisture stress condition in the soil and unless there is rain within five to seven days, the moisture stress condition would spread to the plant resulting in yellowing and browning and eventual death/wilting of the plant,” said an agriculture official. However, there are reports of paddy plant getting brownish due to shortage of water. We desperately need rain within a week to carry forward the agriculture operations, he maintained. Ironically, most of the Mudas and Katas and other sources of water are in dry condition. Hence, the farmers have no option left except rain.
Even if now rain occurs, the whole agriculture operations would be over by the end of August and it would affect the yield. Barely a few days are left for the Hindu calendar month Shravan to end but still the roads and fields are dry. By July 15, agriculture operations should be going on full swing but this year the situation is different, rued a farmer.
Dr. Arjun Purohit’s respond to failure of the Balangir medical college project
Following mail was sent to KDDF group by Dr. Arjun Purohit:
Failure to establish medical college in Bolangir is no accident, because the political structure of Orissa is such that real problems of Western Orissa never gets its share of concern . Our legitimate concern are regarded
neither by the ruling BJD , and what is even more disheartening, nor by the powerful nexus of “intellectuals” and the mandarins who mostly come from the coastal area. For them the priority is to establish most human resource institutions, especially well funded ones(central) in the sixty mile zone. Neither logic nor equity, not even pragmatics matter. Here are couple of new examples. Silently without much fan fair, Central Institute of Design is coming up in BBSR, even though Sambalpur-Bargarh-Sonepur corridor excel any part of Orissa in textile design. Against all logic and pragmatics, ESCI medical college is not starting in Rourkela. In this case even the blessing and approval of Insurance folks did not matter. Airport Jharsuguda airport can not take off even after most of the dots are connected. Ominous sign is even though next five year plan is not yet in place, the only announcement so far has been that Orissa will be getting one of the eleven world class university and that would be based in BBSR. This follows the same pattern as before. Even when not single kilowatt of energy is produced in BBSR, Central Institute of Power Management is coming up in BBSR. Consistent with the same pattern, Institute of Steel Research is established in Puri. All our protests and petitions based on sound logic have been put aside. If Orissa would have worked as Orissa, which needs overall growth in all areas, and the formal and informal decision makers would really thinks of Orissa as a whole, these folks would have been protesting against such arbitrary decision making.
I am especially disappointed with A.U.Singhdeo. Just see today’s Sambad in the section of debates in Orissa legislature. Apparently,a report on regional discrepancy was sponsored by the state government at a cost of 35 lakhs and it was submitted after 4 years and five months. Singhdeo,the minister responsible,appointed a subcommittee to examine the report and recommendations are supposed to have been submitted by March,2009, that is exactly two years ago. So nothing is happening. I would have thought that Singhdeo who represents KBK, the most wretched place in Orissa having most of its population under poverty line would have acted promptly in the interest of his constituency. How and why folks in Bolangir vote such a person to represent them is beyond me. Now with tongue in cheek, he says he would see the completion of the medical college in three years only after he is elected again ! Unbelievable. I still do not understand why Nain’s government is not fulfilling its pledge to takeover the medical college. As you know, after the last budget, he boldly announced that Orissa has a surplus, and development will not be hindered in the state because of lack of money. I do not understand why the handful of Males from Western Orissa are putting his feet on fire; in stead they have become sycophants for the government.
We are really running out of options. The traditional measures are not working. The current political structure is not responsive to our needs. The only option available to us is to have our own state so that we can shape our own destiny, just as Telengana is trying. Enough is enough.
lovingly
Arjun Purohit
Canada
apurohit1934@gmail.com
Balangir school student dies in Chennai brick kiln
Following is a report from the Pioneer:
It is unfortunate that such incidents are still happening even after the implementation RTE act.
Kosal Discussion and Development Forum 