Harichandanpur: The government implements a host of welfare programmes and schemes to push tribal and rural development, but scores of tribal pockets under Harichandanpur block in Keonjhar district wallow in backwardness in the absence of basic facilities. For them, development has been a distant dream even after seven decades since Independence.
Kataghati village in Tangariapal panchayat is a case in point. The village has remained backward on all fronts – road connectivity, drinking water, education, housing and healthcare, a report said.
A rocky hilly road and shanties, most of them without walls, speak volumes of deprivation and lack of development.
Villagers told this correspondent that though they had been drawing the attention of the administration and people’s representatives at various levels, none paid heed to their plight and hardships.
The village is inhabited by 54 tribal families belonging to Munda and Santhal communities. The residents face the difficulty of negotiating with a rocky narrow road and crossing two creeks every day whenever they venture out of the village for work, it was learnt.
Their sufferings double up in the rainy season when the road becomes muddy and slippery and the creeks are in spate, the residents said.
“In the rainy season, even walking on the route is difficult. In case people fall ill or pregnant women need emergency medical services, they are carried in slings to hospitals,” some villagers rued.
In the absence of a proper road, ambulance service is not accessible to the villagers, they added.
After repeated pleas to the administration, a layer of earth and murram was laid on the road, but the condition of the road deteriorated again after rains, some villagers said.
Children of the village have provision for studying upto Class-V. After that, they have to go to a school at Tangariapal, three away km from the village, it was learnt.
In the monsoon, the children remain confined to the village and stop going to school, because it becomes impossible for them to cross the overflowing creeks, the residents said.
The government has set up an Anganwadi centre, but it runs from the house of a villager. As the primary school lies close to a forest and has no boundary wall, constant fear of wild animals haunt the students.
Drinking water is a major problem for the tribals. “Till date, the government has not made provision of safe drinking water. We have to drink contaminated water from creeks. As a result, many of us affected by waterborne diseases,” the villagers said.
Electricity has been an impossible proposition for the tribal residents in the hilltop village.
“We have been taking up our problems with the administration and people’s representatives, but to no avail,” villagers said, demanding that the administration should show sincerity in implementing welfare programmes. PNN
