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Out of the jungle come starving, startled
survivors
Uttaranchal Governor to adopt 50 tsunami
victims
Nicobarese suffer major losses
Jarawas safe: govt
NCW discusses sex ratio |
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Bihar fails to meet photo
I-card target
Haryana Cong leaders grapple with names
They lived with bodies for
four months
Interpol asked to trace Buddha’s head
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Out of the jungle come starving, startled
survivors
SHE lay in a hospital bed, her baby son curled up by her side — Priscilla and Michael. Two more victims of the tsunami. But she didn’t want to talk. She turned her back and gently tended to the child.
The other people in the hospital said that she was a single mother — an aboriginal from the remote island of Chowra, where her village had been wiped out of existence by the tsunami. She is just one face in the crowd of refugees. Another is Irene James who owns nothing in this world. Even the clothes on her back, the sober black dress, the red scarf tied around her forehead, were charitable donations given to her by relief workers. Everything she owned was wiped out in two minutes. Her 10-year-old granddaughter, Olive, sits quietly in her lap. They have nowhere to go. Their home village doesn’t exist any more. It was wiped out too, eradicated from the face of the earth by the sea. Car Nicobar, the island they lived on, is all but uninhabitable now. Irene and her granddaughter survived for three days in the jungle before Indian rescue teams found them. They lived off coconuts, yams and bananas. There was no fresh water, so they drank the water from coconuts. They had to avoid the pythons in the jungle. They used to have a comfortable house and a television until the wave snuffed the 21st century out and returned their island to the stone age. Now they have no idea where they will go or what they will do. Their whole lives were taken away from them. They are utterly dependent on the charity of others. They sit huddled under a makeshift canvas awning in a refugee camp in an empty school in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Crowded around them in the camp are thousands of refugees, all with their own stories to tell. And spread out around them, all across the Indian Ocean, are millions more. Moses Reuben is Irene’s brother-in-law, a soft-spoken man with a heavily lined face. His son and two grandsons died in the tsunami. “My son, Paul, was trying to rescue my grandson. Melchior, my grandson was sleeping. Mr Reuben and his family are Nicobarese, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands. They look nothing like other Indians and they speak their own languages. Even the people from one island do not understand the language from the next, and survivors from the more remote islands have found themselves utterly isolated in hospitals where no one speaks their language. But the aboriginals of Car Nicobar are not stone age tribals, like some of the other people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They are highly educated people. Mr Reuben speaks impeccable English. He worked as a social worker on Car Nicobar. Like most of the people on Car Nicobar, he is a Christian. “We were praying in church when the tsunami came,” he said. Car Nicobar is the worst hit of the islands here. Almost all traces of civilisation have been wiped out, and half the island’s population, some 10,000 persons are missing. Thousands of survivors, like Mr Reuben and his family, lived in the jungle for days and the government is holding out hopes that there are still more survivors deep inside the jungle. The authorities have imposed a blanket ban on journalists travelling to Car Nicobar, but relief workers who have been on the island say the situation there is far worse than the government is admitting. Down at Port Blair’s harbour, a constant stream of ships arrives bearing refugees from the islands. Their grim features picked out by the spotlights in the harbour. As the crowd trudges wearily down the jetty, one woman stops and begins to wail uncontrollably, cradling a baby in her arms. “Will you write what has happened to us?” demands another man. “The authorities have done nothing for us. We have been forced to live in the jungle for an entire week, and only now they have come for us.” His name is AK Das and he is a refugee from Hut Bay on Little Andaman. Anger is boiling up against the authorities. The government has refused American aid, saying it can handle the problem. But many refugees from islands say the authorities have not done enough. Relief workers have accused the authorities of underplaying the scale of the disaster in the Andamans. Down by Port Blair harbour, a man looms out of the darkness. At first he smiles and wants to shake your hand. He is a refugee from Car Nicobar. Then, abruptly, he breaks down and starts to cry. You put your arms around him. There is nothing else you can do. — By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Uttaranchal Governor to adopt 50 tsunami
victims
Dehra Dun, January 1 Mr Agarwal said the trust would take care of educational and other requirements of the children at a cost of Rs 1,000 per child for five years. Talks were on with the state authorities and Rotary clubs in Nagapattanam and Chennai to zero in on the needy children, he said. The Governor had earlier announced a personal contribution of Rs 1 lakh to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. In the process of mobilising funds for disaster relief from various quarters, the Governor said he had requested the Prime Minister to make a relaxation in the guidelines for utilisation of MP’s local area development fund up to Rs 25 lakh each for relief and rehabilitation measures. If all members contributed, this could draw a neat sum of Rs 200 crore for relief and rehabilitation. He has written to the Governors of various states to advise the Chief Ministers to make a similar relaxation in the utilisation of MLA’s constituency development fund. The Governor has invited the Principals of high-end public schools in Dehra Dun and Mussoorie to urge them to make appeals for contribution from students and their parents. Uttaranchal, a disaster-prone state, ought to show more sensitivity in feeling the pang for the affected, he said. He has prodded all officials to contribute at least a day’s salary towards the disaster relief fund while senior officials contribute 15 days’ salary. Chief Minister N.D. Tiwari has earlier announced a relief of Rs 1 crore towards the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. Meanwhile, a three-member team of experts from the Earthquake Engineering Department at IIT, Roorkee, has left for Andaman and Nicobar islands to study the various aspects of tsunami. The team comprising of Mr D.K. Paul, Mr Yogendra Singh and Mr R.N. Dubey has been sent at the request of the Andaman and Nicobar Government, said Mr V.K. Mathur, Director, IIT, Roorkee. The team would also identify the buildings rendered unsafe for habitation by the disaster. |
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Nicobarese suffer major losses
New Delhi, January 1 Talking to The Tribune from Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar
Administration Development Commissioner Anshu Prakash said reports of the six tribes being wiped out were not correct and most tribesmen inhabiting the islands appeared to have survived the Sunday’s tragedy. He said the total population of Jarawas was 250, Onges 100, Great Andamanese 25 and Sentinelese 100. Nicobarese, numbering 25,000, had suffered major losses with the official death toll at 390. “About 3,000 to 4,000 Nicobarese are missing. A clear picture will emerge in due course of time” he said. Anthropologists’ main concern is the Sentinelese, perhaps the most isolated community. The Jarawa tribes were the most feared among the aborigines till 1995-96. Of Negrito origin, they are short in stature and live in protected areas in middle and south Andaman and Interview Island. |
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Jarawas safe: govt
New Delhi, January 1 Mr A.K. Rastogi, Secretary, Home Ministry, said all the 266 members of the Jarawa tribal community, which were 240 in number according to 2001 census, were safe. However, there was still no information about 398 members of the Shompen tribals. The survey of the islanders was getting complete and there were still 3754 missing people in the Andamans, while putting the total number of deaths in Sunday’s tsunami disaster at 8955, he told reporters here. The increase of 1100 was because of the number of deaths reported from Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam where 5525 persons had died. Mr Rastogi said a total of 6,35,568 persons had been evacuated from various states and lodged in camps. Of these, however, 33,000 persons in Andhra Pradesh had gone back to their villages and there were no camps in the state now. He said lines of communication had been established with 14 islands in the Andaman and Nicobar today and relief supplies were rushed with the help of the Indian Navy. About 295.40 metric tonnes of relief supplies had been sent and there was a plan to send more 450 MT of relief material. While claiming that “things are well under control’’ and there had been “vast improvement’’ in the communication infrastructure, Mr Rastogi said eight officers of the Director level, seven DANICS and three DANIPS (Police Service) officials had been deputed to Andaman islands to supervise the distribution of the relief material. — UNI |
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Schoolboy donates pocket money
Chennai, January 1 R. Srivatsa, a student of St Vincent Matriculation Higher Secondary school here, has sent a demand draft for Rs 500 to the Governor as his contribution to relief measures. The boy has donated the amount from his pocket money. Mr Barnala termed the gesture “very touching’’, a press note from his office said. —
UNI |
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Railways contribute day’s salary
New Delhi, January 1 A Railways spokesman said a cheque for Rs 15 crore was sent to the Prime Minister’s office yesterday. |
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UP ministers donate month’s salary
Lucknow, January 1 Despite an appeal to the MLAs by the Vidhan Sabha Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey on December 27, none had come forward to donate anything to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund till today. Governor T.V. Rajeswar was the first to do his bit by contributing a month’s salary, the day after the disaster. The Vidhan Parishad Chairman, Mr S.S. Yadav, and the Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha followed suit and made fervent appeals to other members. Setting up the most elaborate machinery, the Calamity Relief Committee of the BJP, headed by Leader of Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha Lalji Tandon, has six vice-presidents representing different regions. They have been asked to mobilise people to raise money. Incidentally, this drive will coincide with the ‘agitation fortnight’ from January 1 to 15 to mobilise the cadre as planned by the state unit during its working committee meeting last month. |
Prayers for tsunami victims
KOCHI: Special prayers were held in churches across Kerala for the tsunami victims.
In the midnight mass held on Friday at various churches, prayers were held for the thousands who perished in India and other nations and those who lost their belongings to the killer waves, church sources said. —PTI
LIC workers’ gesture
AURANGABAD: The employees of the Life Insurance Corporation of India here have contributed Rs 1 lakh for the rehabilitation of Tsunami-affected people in southern India.
LIC’s senior divisional manager M.Ravichandran on Friday handed over |
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Natwar to attend ASEAN meet New Delhi, January 1 “Because of his commitment to inaugurate the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2005, the Prime Minister has requested the External Affairs Minister to represent him at the meeting,” an official release here said.—
PTI |
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NCW discusses sex ratio
New Delhi, January 1 An NCW member, Dr Sudha Mallaiya, told The Tribune today that for the first time Punjab was able to give the NCW concrete data on the number of cases registered under the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994, now renamed as Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, and also the number of ultrasound machines in the state. “As per Punjab, the number of ultrasound machines in the state is 1,155 and the number of cases registered under the PNDT Act 55,” said Dr Mallaiya. Haryana officials told the NCW delegation that there were 816 ultrasound machines in the state, besides 43 in government hospitals and five in mobile vans. Dr Mallaiya said 22 cases had been registered in Haryana under the PNDT Act. Punjab and Haryana, she said, were two states among the four in the country where the child sex ratio had declined to less than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys, the other two in the category being Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. She said to tackle the problem, the commission advised the Punjab Government to instruct the ANMs to maintain a register on the number of pregnancies and births in their respective areas. “This will show how many pregnancies actually resulted in births. The Punjab Government assured us that such an exercise had begun in the state. However, no such effort was being made by Haryana, also an adversely-affected state as far as child sex ratio is concerned,” she said. The declining sex ratio, Dr Mallaiya, said, was leading to an increase in the number of crimes against women. “Due to this, unmarried young men are turning to crime and violence against women has increased,” she said. This was also resulting in large-scale trafficking of women to Haryana, Punjab and New Delhi from other states in the country like Assam, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa. She said high-level committees in all states should be constituted to review the situation and take action against erring doctors. However, regarding the problem of deserted NRI wives, Dr Mallaiya said Punjab was not making adequate efforts “It is the worst-affected state with thousands of such cases. What is surprising is that despite a high number of victims, the state government has not made efforts to discuss the issue with the Ministry of External Affairs or set up a coordinating committee to deal with the problem,” she said. Dr Mallaiya said the NCW had already recommended signing of a draft convention between India and those countries where Indians were found in large numbers to protect the rights of spouses of inter-country, NRI and foreign marriages. Victims, she said, found it difficult to reach legal solutions outside their country’s legal systems in the absence of unification of laws. In Punjab specifically, awareness campaigns should be organised to sensitise girls and their parents about difficulties resulting from such marriages.
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Bihar fails to meet photo
I-card target
New Delhi, January 1 Giving state-wise progress report on the preparation of the EPICs, the Union Law Ministry in a report said Bihar and Jharkhand, where Assembly elections are to be held in three phases on February 3, 15 and 23, had been lagging far behind. Since the identification of a voter at the time of casting his vote through any government document had been made mandatory by the Election Commission (EC), the dismal performance by the two states was being considered a serious matter, particularly when they have a history of large scale rigging and poll related violence. Quoting figures provided by the EC, the Law Ministry said Bihar had managed to provide photo I-cards to 51.57 per cent voters, while Jharkhand’s performance was even worse as it could prepare the EPICs of only 49.89 electors. In fact Jharkahand and Bihar were at the bottom of the progress list prepared by the ministry after Arunachal Pradesh, which was able to provide the cards to only 48.84 per cent voters. In contrast the performance of Haryana, which will be having one-day poll on February 3, was being considered commendable, as the state had been able to provide EPICs to 91.27 per cent electors. Haryana’s achievement in this regard is the third best after Pondicherry (cent per cent) and Kerala (99.98 per cent). The EC had issued direction to the Centre and the states for completing the task of providing voters I-cards in two phases and fixed a “threshold” limit of 85 per cent coverage in the first phase during which field campaigns for extensive coverage of voters included in the existing rolls had been launched, the Ministry said. The Union Government had released an amount of Rs 526.53 crore to the states as its 50 per cent share for preparing the EPICs. |
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Haryana Cong leaders grapple with names
New Delhi, January 1 Nine senior state leaders, who have been authorised by the Pradesh Election Committee (PEC) to decide the panel of names, resumed their meeting at 3 pm today. Sources said the meeting continued for about four hours after which the leaders dispersed for dinner. PCC chief Bhajan Lal and three of his loyalists came out for mutual discussions after which the PEC meeting was resumed at 9 pm. The sources said most of sitting party MLAs would be nominated again. With the Congress central leadership having refused to accept individual lists from senior leaders, the PEC has been left with no choice but to come up with panel of names. The names will be later examined by the screening committee before being approved by the central election committee. Sources said nine-member PEC committee had yesterday decided to send single-name panels on 12 seats, including nine held by sitting party
MLAs. |
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They lived with bodies for
four months
Hyderabad, January 1 The mother Saileela, after the death of her husband B. Krishnaiah, a lecturer in a local college, lived a secluded life with her three children, Arun Kumar (16), Priya (14) and Venkatesh (12), in a rented house at Sivaji Nagar. The neighbours saw the family members rarely, though Saileela would pay her rent regularly. For the last few months, only Arun Kumar would come out of the house to take back some food and groceries. On Friday, the landlady, Ms Lakshmamma, knocked the door of the house to help an electricity employee take the meter reading. When the boy opened the door, she found that the house was in a bad shape. When she asked the boy for his mother, he said she was taking her bath. The landlady forced herself into the house only to find a skeleton on the cot. She ran out and informed the police, who found one more skeleton in another room. The police were taken aback that two children could live with a couple of dead bodies for such a long period. The children, who initially maintained that their mother and brother were alive and had gone to Tirupati, later admitted that they were dead in August. A psychiatrist, who examined the children, said they seemed to be under a delusion that some relatives resorted to witchcraft to kill their mother and brother and were out to kill them too. The police said the investigation revealed that the boy procured movie cassettes everyday from a nearby video parlour and the children locked themselves inside the house watching the films on TV. |
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Interpol asked to trace Buddha’s head
Kolkata, January 1 “The Indian Museum authorities sought Interpol’s help yesterday to help recover the priceless piece made of sandstone and one of the most interesting exhibits,” Director of the museum S.K. Basu told PTI. It was stolen from a glass-case in the archaeological gallery of the museum during visiting hours. The museum authorities have written to the ASI about seeking Interpol’s help. He said the detective department of the Kolkata Police was investigating the theft. It was questioning the museum staff. He said Governor G.K. Gandhi, who is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the museum, had convened a meeting of the board, which would take place here shortly. —
PTI |
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