Its Monsoon time in Kochi… so here comes floods
so as every year, half the city is waterlogged with drains and canals choked from a winter of being ignored. Every year the same problem, every year the same excuse, every year the same citizens suffer with their homes ruined.
vent your spleen on one of the Kochi Corporation officials responsible for doing something about it: The public can contact the following numbers in case of water-logging in their areas:
Mattancherry – 2226202;
Vytilla – 2303502;
Edapally – 2344839;
Palluruthy – 2232905;
Pachalam – 2435050 and
Fort Kochi – 2215965.
The corporation has also released a list of its officials who can be contacted for handling the issue of water logging:
R. Sreekumar (Central, Vytilla and Pachalam) 94464 22965
T.K. Sajeev (Edapally) 94464 36678
Roy Thomas (Fort Kochi) 94950 42006
V.K. Abdul Salam, Paluruthy – 94472 33181
Health Inspector Mohanan Nair – 94473 19539
Assistant Health Officer – 94474 59529
Health Officer – 94472 91213
Corporation Engineer – 94473 15377
Corporation Secretary – 94474 21768 or 94464 83404.
Cholera in Kerala
The arrival of the monsoon in May 2009 has brought with it some unwelcome visitors that the government is loathe to admit or even discuss – viral fever and cholera.
The scale of the epidemic is hard to quantify and assess and likely to be seriously understated. 10 cases have been acknowledged in the Kuttanad area around the backwaters of Alappuzha but with the monsoon flooding out the water supply, the scope of the epidemic is likely to take off.
That cholera exists in Kerala at all is shocking and reflects the woeful state of the water supply in the backwaters area and the continued poor investment in both infrastructure and education for the poor families who live on the backewaters. The people of the Kuttanad are familiar with monsoon illnesses which strike them every monsoon and are typically characterised as “viral illnesses”. Two years ago all India was gripped in fear of Dengue which especially affected the North and also Kerala. Kerala was especially impacted by chickunguniya which effected the tourism trade especially and was again handled with haphazard tactics by local officials.
Government response, typically, is denial in the hope that the problem will go away before anybody notices it. This year’s Cholera outbreak in Kerala is the most serious so far. First, it is the fact that Cholera which has been wiped out in most of the world by good infrastructure management can still break out in Kerala. It says everything about the state of water supplies and undermines government propaganda on the success of policies. Cholera is very much a 3rd world disease and this implies something about the backwaters which Kerala is loathe to admit.
What happens now will be interesting. Will the outbreak peter out and will it spread. What will/should the state authorities say.
Update 1:
about 1000 cases of viral illness have been reported, 260 cases of chickunguniya and a death from rat disease [sic]. Keralites will be relieved by Kerala Health Minister P.K. Sreemathy’s comments that the epidemics being reported from some parts of the State are now under ‘complete control.’ 11 cases of Cholera have been reported from one panchayat in Alappuzha district alone.
Opposition Leader Oommen Chandy descries the response of the state government and criticises them for not instating the Kuttanad scheme which was dropped, according to him, for narrow political reasons.
Poll:
[polldaddy poll=1668234]
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