Fund delay: Kunchan Smarakam in the lurch

Palakkad: Kunchan Nambiar Smaraka Kalapeethom, the memorial of Malayalam poet Kunchan Nambiar at illikkurissimangalam, near Lakkidi in Palakkad is facing severe crisis due to fund shortage.
Artists, teachers and support staff employed there have not received their salaries for the past six months. Monthly scholarship given to merit students of the institution has also stopped.
The maintainance and repair works of the buldings seem to have come to a halt as well. The memorial provides monthly scholarship to 21 students. It has eight teachers - trained artists - to teach them. There is also two permanent staff to manage the institution.
The institution, set up under Kerala Kalamandalam functions as an autonomous institution, with financial assistance from the cultural department of Kerala government.
The institution offers training to students in art forms like Thullal, Mohinyattam and Kaikottikkali, musical instruments and classical music.
The memorial too shapes 1976 under the initiative of the then chief minister C. Achutha Menon.
According to one of the faculty members of the institution, delay in procuring the promised Rs.20 lakh grant from the state government is the reason for the present financial lurch faced by the institution.
According to M. Hamsa MLA, a governing body member of the Kunchan Smarakam, a memorandum was given to the minister for cultural affairs K C Joseph to allot an amount of Rs.20 lakh in the state budget for the Smarkam. He claims that though the minister promised funds, it was not materialised.
"The institution gets only Rs.5 lakh annually from the government, which is not sufficient even to meet the salary of teachers and staff. We need to clear the pending salary of the staff and scholarship for students," the M.L.A said.