Srungavarapukota (Andhra Pradesh): A three-year-old child died on Monday while being taken to a hospital in the Mettapalem district. His family claimed poor conditions of the road led to delay in boarding public transport which took away the life of the child.
Due to lack of vehicles, it took a while for Badnaina Jeevankumar, to get hold of an auto, and take his ailing son Prasad to the hospital in Mettapalem, almost nine kilometres away from his house in the Gunapadu village.
The delay cost Jeevankumar his son's life, as he held onto Prasad's dead body and returned with it to the village. Tribal community leaders blamed the authorities and local leaders for not paying attention to the issue of appalling state of the roads.
Despite officials of the District Medical and Health Office and Integrated Tribal Development Agency visiting the village in January and assuring speedy conduction of medical camps, nothing took place in reality.
People are facing the brunt due to the carelessness of the authority, claimed local leaders. "People are having to lose their lives while travelling on the road. A few days ago, a dead body was unloaded from an ambulance in the middle of a road in the Alluri district.
The father was forced to cary his son's dead body for eight kilometers in the dark," a local said.
As recent as last month, a woman gave birth to a child in the middle of the road as there were no vehicles available to take her to the local district hospital in the Alluri district. The woman's family members dialled 108 at 4 AM to book an ambulance but to everyone's shock, it arrived four hours later, at 8 AM.
Adding to the woes, the ambulance stopped a kilometer away from the village due to the terrible condition of the roads. Given these circumstances, it is incumbent upon the local government to take charge and fix these roads at the earliest but in vain.
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