Mylucherla villagers begs for govt attention

Kanigiri: Kanagari Ramadevi is the mother of a five-year old boy and lives in Mylucherla, a hamlet in Prakasam district. She is worried about the future of her son, who could not get education, medical facilities or even nutritious food and safe drinking water. Along with her, many young women are also feeling the same way about their children.

Mylucherla is a village in the interior of Nallamala forest at a distance of 7 km from nearby village Vatlabayalu and 20 km from the mandal headquarters Chandrashekharapuram. The hamlet has nearly 100 houses and around 150 old-aged people and mothers of small children live there. Some of the remaining families have migrated to other places.

The people in the village depend on rainfed agriculture and get food if the crop comes to yield. The village has no minimum infrastructure facilities like road connectivity, drinking water, school or a primary health center. They should walk on a stony path for 7 km to get medical help, commodities and staples and 3 km for drinking water. In the year 1980, the central government has installed two hand pumps, which are not in god condition now. The electricity department laid a single-phase line to power the basic machines.

K Tirupatamma said, “Our village is not a new formation and has been in existence for nearly a century. We have spent decades here walking 20 km daily for every need. Our people submitted representations many times to the government but no one came forward to provide even basic infrastructure in our village.”

K Madamma said, “As they do not have a school, children wste their time in playing on the rocks and on trees. They might be bitten by snakes and scorpions. We have no primary health center or hospital nearby for treatment. In most cases, they die in our hands before reaching the road here to go to Ongole for medical treatment .”

G Venkataiah said, “The government is giving ration cards and pensions for a few of us. But to get them, the elderly people have to walk long distances for hours. We have seen people losing lives on the way to get pension and ration at V Bayalu.

The women have to walk for nearly 10 km daily to get 1 pot of drinking water. The government is not responding to our requests because we think that it do not want us to live there. We are still here because we are old -aged and our sons cannot afford accommodating us in the towns.”