KOCHI: Ten children, five of them girls, who study from LKG to Standard VIII, are a harried lot as they have to travel one and a half km every day now through Vembanad Lake to cross to the Udayamperoor mainland from their island to reach different schools. That this happens in the most literate state and at a time when the Right to Education Act is in place is an irony. They and the 35-odd other inhabitants from nine families of the 12 acre Mukkathukariyil island, West of Poothotta, used to cross the lake to a jetty just 600 metre opposite to their island. But according to the islanders, now a private resort owner has put up a barbed fence around the jetty and adjoining places denying them access.
“The six acres comprising the land on the jetty to the lane connecting to the main road is kayal (lake) purmaboke and has been fenced now. Following our complaint, the Udayamperoor panchayat authorities asked the taluk surveyor to survey the land and the panchayat asked the resort owners to give us way. But nothing has happened so far,” said Rajesh M P, an inhabitant of the island. The islanders eke out a living through fishing. And, taking the children to the mainland and back through country crafts during rainy days is a gargantuan task with the lake turning rough.
“And the extended travel through the one and half kilometres becomes all the more risky then. Earlier we could hear children calling from across the lake, now we have to give them mobile phones so that when they are ready they call and we can go and collect them. Even to reach a hospital we have to cross this long stretch to the mainland,” said Rajesh. But as always happens, the man who could fight for them is missing. “Even the panchayat member of our Ward VIII resides in the mainland,” Rajesh added.
