Mukkathukariyil Island students get Kerala High Court attention

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court has admitted a writ petition seeking necessary facilities to ensure that ten children, five of them girls, of Mukkathukariyil Island, West of Poothotta in Udayamperoor panchayat, who study LKG to Standard VIII, are provided safe environs to continue their education in the mainland. Currently, they risk their lives to cross three kilometres in Vembanad lake in ramshackle country boats to reach the mainland school. DC had reported their plight earlier this year. The court ordered notices to respondents, the state of Kerala represented by the chief secretary, Union ministry of human resources, LSGD secretary, general education secretary and Udayamperoor grama panchayat secretary, on a petition filed by Annapoorna, a three-year-old child represented by her fisher father Rajesh on the island.

The petition said that the petitioner lives in the isle which exists in complete exclusion and seclusion with a population of 40 traditional fishers. There are similar other micro islands in Kerala backwaters. The petitioner and other children lead a marooned life off the mainland. “Even after the enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, the children of small islands are neither given schools for pre-school education and elementary education nor given safe travel to reach the school on the mainland and return home. The children are forced to go in crude non-motorised country boats meant for fishing. Vembanad backwaters have the history of frequent country boat sinking tragedies,” the petition said. It also pointed out that the petitioner had fallen from such a craft one week back.

“The very preamble, Part-III and Part-IV of the Constitution of India and the provisions of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 remain frozen and inoperative due to the callousness of the officialdom and the agencies concerned,”  the petitioner praying to redeem them from tragedies and cause the authorities to provide at least access to schools for pre-school and elementary education. It also said that the islanders do not have even their own representative in the grama panchayat to question the illegal exclusion of the children from enjoying constitutional provisions and other legislations like the RTE Act-2009.