Ravindranath Shanbhag, president of the Human Rights Protection Foundation, said on Tuesday that government officials were negligent in providing compensation and relief to persons suffering from various health ailments due to spraying endosulfan in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada districts.
Addressing presspersons here on Tuesday, Dr. Shanbhag said that government officials parried all queries from non-governmental organisations about the facilities provided to endosulfan victims under the excuse that the matter was in the courts.
This had made it difficult for the organisations to confirm all the information available with them but there were several problems with the relief and compensation being given to the victims. Volunteers of the foundation had visited 36 villages in Udupi district and seven in Uttara Kannada district and found problems despite the proclamations by government officials to the contrary
In some villages in Udupi district, they found cases where victims, who were earlier certified as having 70 to 80 per cent disabilities, but were now classified as having only below 60 per cent disabilities. The victims also complained that they had not received bus passes to travel from their villages to the hospitals to get treatment.
He added that no rehabilitation centre had been set up in Udupi or Uttara Kannada district and no initiative had been taken by the government to look to provide Mobile Clinics and Day Care Centres to the Endosulfan victims in Udupi and Uttara Kannada. Though eight victims had died since the Endosulfan survey in these districts, no compensation had been given to them.
Though the government had signed a MoU with Kasturba Hospital, Manipal, for super-speciality reference, some victims had to return empty handed as the agreement had lapsed.
‘Victims have not received bus passes to travel from their villages to hospitals’
