Plantation labourers in Nelliyampathy in the district are on the warpath demanding that they be given an opportunity to die in the land where they spent their entire youth.
The Janata Dal district unit has taken up their cause, and launched an indefinite dharna in front of the village office at Nelliyampathy.
Spearheading the agitation, Janata Dal district president M.M. Kabeer said that no other village in the country witnessed such a fast depletion of residents as Nelliyampathy because of the government’s incorrect policies.
Fifty-eight days passed since the plantation workers started their agitation pressing their demands under the banner of the Janata Dal, but the government has not heeded. The labourers have threatened to encroach into the government land and make settlements of their own if the authorities concerned continued their neglect. Pembilai Orumai leader Gomathi Augustine will join the agitation on November 19.
“Apart from forest land, Nelliyampathy has lease land and government land. Estate and plantation owners and government officials make a beautiful living here while the plantation workers who spend their entire life toiling in this land are expelled from here after their retirement. Our agitation is against this injustice,” said Mr. Kabeer.
In the 1980s, Nelliyampathy had 35,000 people working in 53 estates big and small. But today, the hill-station near Nemmara has hardly 5,000 men and women. “This depletion happened because no man or woman who spent their whole youth here was allowed to live here,” said K. Kandamuthan, a plantation worker.
“My father and my mother worked and died here, and I spent almost my entire youth laboring here. Yet I don’t have a piece of land,” said Mr. Kandamuthan.
After retirement, the labourers are forced to leave Nelliyampathy and settle elsewhere. They are often scattered. Many have suffered miserable deaths. “Imagine what kind of a life they can carry on with the flimsy life-savings they get from here,” said K.J. Francis, former panchayat president of Nelliyampathy.
At present about 800 labourers are being offered a house of their own under the government Life Mission scheme at Nemmara, far away from Nelliyampathy. “Our ancestors were buried here. We can’t be exiled from our land. Let us live and die here,” said K.M. Saleem, Janata Dal president at Nelliyampathy.
Mr. Francis pointed out that Nelliyampathy was the sole panchayat in Kerala where the popular EMS Housing Scheme was not implemented.
The government had completed nearly 1.29 lakh houses for poor people across the State.