THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The story of clearing up an irrigation canal, by the sheer will of Kudumbashree members, and retold by CDS chairperson Viji Sasi from Manaloor in Thrissur at the 13th anniversary meeting of the Kudumbashree, literally made everyone sit up in their chairs."It was while clearing up an irrigation canal, a programme under the rural employment generation scheme, that we noticed some pipes below the soil layers, but jutting into the canal. We didn’t know what it was then, but on probing, we found it was pipelines directly leading out from the toilets of nearby houses,’’ recalled Viji.Needless to say, they were shocked at the blatant disregard for the environment and agricultural workers who would be in direct contact with the water. There were a lot of public ponds on either side of the canal and jaundice began raising its ugly head.On further investigations, they found 18 houses were guilty of the crime, and now the number stands close to 40, to whom notices have been served. Now, a close monitoring is made on all the houses in the area, with Kudumbashree members forming a vigilant squad visiting houses at regular intervals.For those Kudumbashree members living near the notorious waterways such as Parvathy Puthanar, Kuzhikandam Thodu and Puthiya Thodu, this was an experience that they felt could be replicated in their areas too.The session on health had 14 presentations from right across the State, most of them enlightening and heart-warming. The CDS chairpersons shared their experiences with their counterparts from other districts, doctors and mediapersons. There were ten parallel sessions on various topics such as group farming, micro-enterprises, social security and so on.Some of the most interesting experiences shared at the health session included that of the Pudukode unit in Palakkad, which traced an outbreak of skin problems to the germ-infested saw dust used as fuel; the Pathanamthitta unit which effectively dealt with the problem of cholera and dysentery by effective chlorination of a public well; that of the Ernakulam unit which excelled in palliative care and that of Ramanattukara in Kozhikode which fought a battle against a series of epidemics such as rat fever, jaundice and cholera.The experience-sharing of the Kudumbashree units will continue at the Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium here on Friday.
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