Hyderabad: A delegation of social activists have urged the State government to constitute a high-level committee consisting of community representatives, civil society leaders and government officials to ensure that the people’s rights are protected in the planning and implementation of the Musi Riverfront Development Project (rejuvenation and beautification).
A delegation activists led by Professor G Haragopal met MA&UD principal secretary Dana Kishore at his office in Masab Tank on Friday, to draw chief minister A Revanth Reddy’s attention to the issues being faced by the thousands of families living on the Musi River bed.
The delegation has urged the State government to be attentive to the rights of the people and their needs at every stage of the planning and implementation of the project.
Most importantly, the delegation has urged the chief minister to wary of the fact that whenever any eviction happens, the academic year of the children gets affected, and in most of the cases, they drop out of school.
The delegation urged the chief minister to ensure that those children continued their education in schools located close to where they have been staying.
“The people who live along the river have a long and filial relationship with the river and they want the river to be protected and sustained as a lifeline of the city. Their religious and cultural moorings are shaped by it,” notes the representation the delegation gave to Dana Kishore.
The delegation brought to the notice of the chief minister that since the times of the Nizams, people have purchased the properties on the Musi’s banks to graze their cattle and for other means of livelihood, for which they had only notarized documents.
The delegation also points out that multiple families have been living in a single household, and only one family was being considered eligible for the 2bhk scheme assured by the State government for alienating their properties, that would lead to disputes within joint-families and households having more number of people.
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“If a minimum number of people who live on the ‘bed’ of the river have to be rehabilitated, their right to live in dignity and sustain their livelihoods have to be recognised,” states the representation.
The delegation suggested offering a rehabilitation within 2-3 km of the evictees’ current locations, so that they don’t have to come back every day to perform their duties from far away locations, if they are allotted houses there.
They also brought the plight of the tenants who have been living in those houses for decades and those whose entire belongings have been washed away in the Musi floods in the recent past, who have been living in temporary sheds in those areas.
They sought transparency in the implementation of the project.
