Polling booth in relief camp upsets inmates

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Valiyathura UP School has been a permanent relief camp for many displaced fishermen for decades. But the school is also one of the polling booths for the coming assembly elections, posing a crisis for those who have made the school their home.“We have no place to move and these families, including mine, are forced to stay in these camps because of the apathy of the changing governments. They give us empty promises but proper rehabilitation is our basic right and every government has failed us. Come what may, we will not move from this camp. If they want to set up a polling booth, they should do it without disrupting our lives,” says Sumi Prasad, one of the displaced families staying at the school. 

Sumi is a member of one of the 16  families staying at the school, one of the approved booths for the coming assembly elections. “It’s summer and at most nights there is no electricity because of poor cable network. We informed the authorities about this but they want us to pay for the new wiring, which we cannot afford. There are infants, small children and elderly and we are struggling here,” Sumi says. “My father-in-law died in this camp three years ago.

Life has always been a struggle for me and I feel disheartened when I see my family struggling like this. A couple of officers came here, informing us about the elections. We don’t have a place to move temporarily to facilitate the election. If they give us another place, we will move,” says Sindhu, another inmate of the camp.  

More than 600 families became displaced in recent years due to advancing sea and severe sea erosion. Baby John, another inmate, said that many families with grown-up children had to move to rented homes.
 “There is hardly any privacy for teenagers and many families, despite the financial constraints, had to move to rented homes. There were more families here. Only very few got homes from the government. If we had any other option we would have moved already.”

 The district administration is planning to conduct the election without disrupting these families. “As of now, we don’t have any plans to evict or displace these families. The school is an approved polling booth and we cannot move it to a new place now. We will set up the booth without disrupting the families,” said a senior official of the district administration.