Hyderabad, June 14: The conference of tribals in the State held under the aegis of the Girijana Aikya Vedika has urged the Government to address the problem of migration to towns.
A memorandum to this effect was submitted to the Chief Minister. The meet adopted other resolutions as well on tribal problems and sought their amelioration.
Aikya Vedika president and Rajya Sabha member T Rathnabai and general secretary of the organisation K Vivek Naik stated in a press release here today that representatives from 35 sub-tribes participated in the conference.
They said not only were those migrating to towns being exploited by middlemen, their numbers in the notified areas was coming down, raising the attendant risk of denotification.
Rathnabai and Vivek demanded that the Government give work for 365 days in the agency areas and prevent migrations from taking place.
They urged that the “Nakkalavaru” sub-caste be included among STs as they were leading a miserable life sans ration cards, pensions and houses. The menace of fake ST certificates was also raised.
They wanted a sub-committee to weed out bogus ST employees in the Government.
Vivek said that of the 500 shops in Tirupati not even one was allotted to STs. The same was the case with respect to other temples. He urged the Government to see to the allotment of some shops in the vicinity of temples to STs.
On the educational front, they pointed out that of the 32 universities in the State none had an ST vice-chancellor though there were eligible candidates.
In fact, even registrar and council member posts were not given to STs, they lamented.
Rathnabai and Vivek wanted the Government to provide reservations to the STs in the private sector. They also sought effective implementation of the PISA act.
Alleging that the Chenchus in Srisailam forest were being driven away and wanted a stop to this.
They said that no action was taken with regard to the proposed Tribal Health University and urged the Government to get things moving.
The leaders demanded a separate survey on the Naik Podus, restoration of lands under the Land Transfer Regulation Act to tribals and upgradation of residential schools to Intermediate.
Government had declared that there were about 5000 ST backlog posts in various departments and they demanded that the same be duly filled.
They also sought the appointed of tribals to women teacher and matron posts in the agency.
In general, the meet stressed employment for educated ST youths and the accrual of benefits from natural resources in the agency areas to STs.
–Agencies