The mother of two tribal children, who died after the sunshade of their under-construction home in Attappady in Kerala’s Palakkad district collapsed on Saturday, decried the absence of emergency vehicles, such as ambulances, adding that one of her two children could have been saved.
The children — Aadi (7) and Ajnesh (4) — died on Saturday evening after the sunshade of their home collapsed upon them while they were playing outside in the Karuvara settlement of Attappady.
Another child suffered serious injuries and is under treatment.
Both deceased children had to be taken on a motorbike first to a private clinic and then to the nearest government hospital in Kottathara, where they were declared brought dead, after multiple attempts to get a vehicle or ambulance on time failed.
It took the family more than an hour to transport the children to the private clinic.
“We lost my younger one on the spot. But the elder one, when pulled out of the debris, was still alive and breathing. He was trying to speak. We tried a lot to get a vehicle to take him to the hospital, but no vehicle came. If we had gotten a vehicle on time, we could have saved his life,” Devi, the mother of the children, told local media.
A relative of the family said they had called the local tribal promoter but were told that the ambulance would have to come far away from Agali.
“It would take a long time for the ambulance to reach our settlement, so we took the children on a motorbike,” he said.
Ravikumar, the local promoter, admitted that there was no ambulance nearby at the time on standby.
“I had informed the ambulance helpline. But it had to come from far away,” the promotor said.
The deaths of the two children have also raised the pertinent issue of non-payment of funds under the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP) for homes of tribals and the shoddy state of their houses.
Attappady taluk in Palakkad district, houses some of the largest tribal settlements in Kerala.
