GUNTUR: A day after a report titled, ‘Abandoned woman takes refuge under a tree’, was published in these columns highlighting how a 75-year-old handicapped woman, Kanthamma, had been living under a tree for the past one week at Ganapavaram village in Palnadu district after her three children abandoned her, the State government swiftly took action and shifted her to the Area Hospital in Narasaraopeta.
Responding to the issue, Minister for Women and Child Welfare Usha Sricharan said, “Helping the poor and elderly, especially women is Jagan government’s priority. As soon as the case was brought to our notice by the CMO, we rushed to the victim and shifted her to the Area Hospital in Narasaraopeta. This action wouldn’t have been possible without our village volunteer and secretariat system. This robust decentralised system ensured the victim’s immediate identification and medical help thereafter. I’m glad we came to the elderly woman’s rescue within no time.”An enquiry into the matter revealed that the woman’s children, two daughters and a son, allegedly took away all her money, gold and documents of a plot.
As her health deteriorated, Kanthamma decided to shift to Guntur permanently to live with her son’s family. However, on reaching the city, she realised that her son did not live in the address he had provided to her. Dejected, she returned to her village only to find that the house she was living in had been rented out to another family.
With nowhere else to go, she started living under a tree. When the local volunteer tried to contact her children, they did not respond. Moved by the woman’s suffering, a Narasaraopet-based NGO, Schedule Tribe Youth Club, came to the village to take her to an old-age home.
Meanwhile, on the instructions of the director of Palnadu district Welfare of Differently-Abled, Transgender, Senior Citizens Department, Raviprakash Reddy, assistant director Ch Suvartha along with Mahila police, and other officials also visited the woman and shifted her to Chilakaluripet Government Hospital in an ambulance. They handed over a monthly pension of Rs 3,000 to the old woman. After her health improves, she will be shifted to the NGO’s home in Narasaraopet, officials said.