Rebuilding rural child care centres

Officials from the Mumbaibased Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDSL) are working overtime to make sure that water-logged anganwadis (rural child care centres) in the worst affected Kerala districts were getting cleaned up, a company executive said.

More than a dozen anganwadis and a few schools in the state’s central districts of Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta have been cleaned up.

MSDL had first started this initiative in Kozhikode. It donated Rs100,000 and over 200 kits comprising all the cleaning materials.

Idukki’s 40-year slide

The hilly district of Idukki has been thrown back by 40 years following Kerala’s worst flooding in a century, Power Minister M.M. Mani said.

“What our forefathers built in the past 100 years to take Idukki to where it was has been washed away. Idukki has gone back by 40 years,” he said.

The main occupation in Idukki is farming.

Roshy Augustine, an Idukki legislator, said that massive efforts were needed to get Idukki back on its feet and rehabilitate all those who had lost everything.

“Since the tragedy struck, politics has taken a back seat. Everyone is working as one single team to restore Idukki to its original self... The need of the hour is a proper dam management policy,” said the Congress MLA.