ONGOLE: The onset of global recession has triggered a reverse migration in the district with more and more labourers, who had moved to urban areas in search of livelihood, now coming back to their villages.
Already, one lakh residents of the district have come back to their villages from various cities across the country.
``I don’t know how America is related to my life.
It’s been three months since I have had a regular employment and with the termination of my contract, I am rendered jobless. Hence, my return to the village,’’ says, Battini Ramesh, a building worker who recently returned to Machavaram village in Kandukuru mandal of Prakasam district.
He said he had lived in Hyderabad with his family for nine years working as a regular employee.
“But, today nobody is ready to give us employment.
Many like me have come back,’’ he adds.
Praksam district has the second highest number of migrants after Mahaboobnagar district. Of late, over one lakh of them have returned to 400-odd villages.
“Another one lakh people are scheduled to come back from Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai later this month with their employment contracts coming to an end,’’ said V N Raja Rao, an agent of manual labourers for construction companies in the metros.
Lack of irrigation facilities had forced these people out of their villages. Most of them are from Kanigiri, Darsi and Kandukur mandals, which not only are affected by lack of irrigated lands but even by the absence of safe drinking water. Ground water in these mandals, which have witnessed increased incidence of migration in the past, has very high levels of fluoride making it unfit for drinking.
Not only is the water polluted by fluoride but elements like Uranium, Radium and Strontium, which are radioactive, have also been found by a team of researchers from the Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences six years ago. The team had then said that the levels of these elements were at least 15 per cent higher than the accepted limits.
The current reverse migration means that these people will once again be exposed to polluted water.
While this is only one aspect of the problem, the other disturbing question is what they would do for a livelihood. Many of these people have returned with the little hope of getting employed under the NREGS, unaware of the fact that Prakasam district has , on a consistent basis, fared badly in implementing the scheme.
The district authorities cancelled works worth Rs 200 crore in the district recently. The situation was equally bad in the last financial year. It remains to be seen how the district authorities will cope with this reverse migration.
ramagopalasastry@epmltd.com
