Rs 25.75 lakh proposal to aid endosulfan victims

137 disabled persons in affected areas

“An amount of  Rs 25.75 lakh is required to give a compensation of Rs 25,000 each to a total of 103 disabled persons of the said villages. A proposal has been sent to the government in this regard,” stated Deputy Commissioner V Ponnuraj in a release.

A team of medical experts from District Government Wenlock Hospital had camped in the villages on August 31 and September 1 and identified as many as 137 disabled persons in the region. The disabled include 64 with 75-100 per cent disability, 39 with 60-70 per cent disability, 6 with 40-50 per cent disability, 11 with disability below 35 per cent and 17 others, the release informed.

As per the report, there are 103 persons having disability above 60 per cent who are eligible to get a compensation of Rs 25,000 each.  “A total of 6 persons from the three villages are already getting monthly allowance, while others could not be given since their income level is higher than the specified limit. The government has been appealed for relaxing the guidelines to help them,” the DC stated.

The proposal has also suggested that if government provides a special scheme of self-employment to the affected persons with 50 per cent subsidy, it would help them to a great extent.  

“A door-to-door survey by health workers has listed problems such as blindness, deafness, impotency, cancer, frequent abortions being faced by the villagers. But it has not yet been proved that the problems are due to the aerial spray of endosulfan,” the release added.