Official apathy and lack of infrastructure has hindered the implementation of the revised package notified by the State government two years ago for the rehabilitation of families evicted for the Vallarpadam International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT).
This was the main finding in a status report on the implementation of the Moolamppilly rehabilitation package submitted to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy by the Coordination Committee for People Displaced by Developmental Projects, here on Monday.
In a 10-page report, the committee members C.R. Neelakantan, Francis Kalathungal, and Regikumar details the progress, or rather the lack of it, in the implementation of the package on the basis of their field visit to all seven sites identified for the rehabilitation of the evictees.
Status report
“The Chief Minister had asked the Coordination Committee to submit a status report during the course of a meeting we had with him following our Secretariat march demanding prompt implementation of the package on February 6, which is observed as Moolamppilly Day,” Mr. Kalathungal told The Hindu .
Accepting the report, Mr. Chandy acceded to the request of the Coordination Committee to visit the rehabilitation sites shortly.
The report observes that only 19 out of the 316 families have so far shifted to houses built on the rehabilitation land with hardly a month left for the second anniversary of the notification of the revised rehabilitation package. Ground level rehabilitation remains suspended though the monitoring committee chaired by the district collector has been consistently meeting and taking decisions.
The report cites lack of drinking water, sorry state of the road and absence of drainage and waste disposal facility as the main problems common to most of the rehabilitation plots whereas power connectivity is reasonably satisfactory.
