The people living in small huts that are no wider than three feet in the ‘Handicapped colony’ at Vallakadavu in the city are in dire straits. It is the waste from the entire city, ‘solid waste’, ‘human waste’ and what not, that keeps flowing by the kitchen side of the huts. With all the houses flooded with this drain water, the residents are forced to eat, sleep and carry out their other daily functions here.
The colony has more than 120 huts, in which around 500 people reside. It is much disheartening that the members of twenty-eight families are handicapped in one way or the other, living a life of misery. Most of them do not have a regular job and go for collecting and selling scrap metal. And now the situation has turned worse as the elders have to go out with a begging bowl to feed the rest living with them.
“The slum does not have a drainage facility. After heavy rains the other day, the public toilet overflowed, flooding the entire slum,” said Sehameth Beevi, a resident here. The residents say they are apprehensive about water-borne diseases breaking out in the area.
However, no effort has been made to monitor the living conditions of the inhabitants here. It has been more than 30 years since people started living here. It is just a piece of cloth or a sheet that separates the kitchen of all the huts here from the drain that flows by and leads to the Parvathy Puthanar.
This is what Asma Beevi says of digging a well in her house for using water: “Spending a huge amount, we dug a well years ago, but from that time the water has been unusable as it stinks and is black in colour.”
It has been years since the houses were re-thatched. According to the residents, no maintenance work is done. Most of the houses have only one or two rooms where six or seven members live.
When it rains, water flows into the houses from the road and also from the drainage that passes through the back side of the huts, making life even more wretched.
“The people are all united and plead for a better solution. There are people belonging to different religions residing here. It has been a long-term demand for a better place to live in,” said Shabeer J, a member of Priyadarshini Residents’ Association.
“We are planning certain programmes for the uplift of the people living here,” said Saneer S, another member of the association.
However, the local councillor, Shajitha Nasar, said: ‘’We have held discussions with Ministers and other people’s representatives, but nothing was done and it seems that all pleas fell on deaf ears. As of now, the people here are facing difficulty, especially during rains. The waste from the entire city passes through their kitchen side,” she said.
She also said that it was their financial crisis that makes the residents to continue living there.