George F. Xavier, general secretary of the Pro-Life Cell of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, and Sajeev Parisavila, leader of the Kerala Latin Catholic Association, undertook a fast from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday to highlight the need for immediate measures to protect the Thanni-Eravipuram coast from sea erosion.
Inaugurating the protest, Joshua Mar Ignathios, Mavelikara Bishop of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, said that life turned miserable for people living along the Kerala coast every monsoon because the authorities took no timely steps to prevent erosion.
The Bishop said that lessons should be learnt from calamities on the coast and preventive steps taken. The Eravipuram-Thanni coast, highly vulnerable to erosion and with many houses, was in urgent need of disaster management. The government should take steps to provide relief to the affected people and meet the monsoon-time challenges from the sea.
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K.J. Yesudas, vicar-general of the Kollam diocese; Kadakkal Adbul Aziz Maulavi, president of the Kerala Muslim Jamath Federation; Swamy Vidyananda from the Sivagiri Math spoke.The demands raised through the fast include construction of a breakwater along the Eravipuram-Thanni coast as recommended by a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai; declaration of the coast disaster-hit; allocation of land to those who had lost their homes to the sea; and steps to restore the sea-battered coastal road.