| In Focus |
 |
 Between the Devil and the Deep Sea
The women of Pallethumalla Palem have salt rubbed in their wounds – quite literally
Driving up to Pallethumalla Palem, a small village eleven kms outside Machilipatnam is Andhra Pradesh, is disconcerting. Failed aquaculture crops have rendered the land barren for miles around it and all one can see is parched, brown ground stretched out under a baking sun, broken only in places by the dull gleam of water in some plots which are still active. The village itself is like many other villages in coastal Andhra Pradesh. Like in most other parts of the region, the fishing community is increasingly depending on additional means of livelihood to make ends meet.
So when Bharat Salt Refinery Limited set up their factory here, the community eagerly looked to them as a source of daily wage labour. And this expectation was soon met – BRSL requires workers for at least six months in the year from January to June. But the extra means of earning comes with a few fringe costs as they have realised over time.
“I started getting headaches and backaches. My ankle joint hurt all the time. My eyes burned,” says Kotamma who worked there for five years before a local doctor told her that her health problems would not cease until she stopped.
“Over time, less and less people work there,” the villagers say. “There are too many health problems. Our skin burns and lets out too much oil. We all suffer from body ache, fevers.”
Investigation into the nature of the work leaves few questions about why they feel this way. It consists of relentlessly pounding the wet soil with their feet for about eight hours a day. Under the blazing sun, they have to keep the feet moving. On other days, they carry vats filled with salt to the transport vehicles. The vats are 20 kgs each and the women carry them on their heads, going back and forth, all day. For this, they get paid Rs 50 a day.
Twenty-year-old Peta Chandralanka went to work on a hot day last May. She did not know she would come home with lasting scars. The vehicle transporting salt had a minor accident, injuring Chandralanka who was walking along next to it after helping with the loading as usual. The accident left her with a broken nose and complications that result in fluid flowing backwards through her eye. The women demanded that BSRL take some responsibility as the accident had occurred on their premises during the course of their work. They gave her Rs 300. Since then, she has incurred Rs 5000 on a surgery and will soon need another one worth Rs 10,000.
The family thought of initiating police action but the village elders advised them to be patient and said that they would try to sort things out. “Nothing happened after that,” she says with a resigned smile, wiping her eye.
The Coastal Environment Rehabilation Project (CERP) runs a number of activities related to restoring mangroves and encouraging agriculture. The other important benefit is that these activities provide people with an alternative means of livelihood.
“Please start work on the mangrove nursery again,” exhort some of the women. “That work is so much better. Then, we don’t have to go to the factory.”
|
|
|
|
