Champua: Can you imagine how a 14-memebr family is residing in a single-room accommodation? They have erected a wooden platform inside their house to accommodate them all.
They are not living like this by choice but compulsion because the benefits of government schemes are still elusive to them.
Nata Munda and his 13 family members have been living in a single-room accommodation at Shankarpur village of Budhamara panchayat under Raruan block in Mayurbhanj district for years.
In order to accommodate them all, they have erected a mancha (a raised wooden platform as farmers use to guard their crops) inside their house. At night, some members go up to the mancha with the help of a ladder and sleep there and the rest on the ground. The mancha rests on four bamboo poles.
Nata’s family comprises of his wife, six sons, two daughters-in-law and four grand children.
Nata says they have no choice but to sleep on the mancha as their house is too small to accommodate them all. “We are forced to sleep on the mancha inside our house as we have not been fortunate to get any house under any of the central or state government’s schemes,” he rues.
While the family members are working as daily labourers to make their ends meet, the space crunch has only aggravated their woes.
Local residents are also astonished to find such a tribal family having not been awarded a pucca house under government schemes as yet. “The family members have to sleep on a mancha inside their house is nothing but a mockery of the government schemes,” they alleged.
When asked, Raruna block development officer (BDO) Pallabi Swain said a pucca house will be provided to Nata if he is eligible to get the same as per the 2011 list of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. Or else, his plight will be brought to the notice of the district level officers and then necessary steps will be taken as per procedural yardstick.
Local people urged the administration to intervene in the matter and award a house to Nata’s family.
PNN
