Guajarat: Tribals rally over job, food & land demands

Tribals and Dalits from across the Guajarat gathered at the Riverfront in the city on Monday to demand for better implementation of their right to land as well as employment and food under the MNREGA and Food Security Act.

Thousands of tribals marched and submitted a memorandum to the deputy collector reiterating their demand that they be given land under the Forest Rights Act.

Paulomee Mistry, secretary of the Eklavya Sangathan that brought together the people, said despite the Forest Land Rights Act 2006 being implemented in the state just 40.4% of the total 182869 claims to land have been given.

"Even when the claims are approved, the tribals are given "Adhikar patra" which is not an acceptable document if the tribal want to claim ownership," said Mistry. She further said that in many tribal areas the MNREGA is a boon for many families that struggle to get employment. "Yet work is not given within a fortnight of being demanded and even when it is given the payment for the same are delayed by six months" said Mistry. She said lower level officials often take bribe from the poor.

The organisation has in its list of demands stated that 200 days of work should be provided instead of 100 days in a year and the workers should get Rs. 300 instead of Rs.174 as wage per day. As for the Food Security Act, she said a movement was on to remove the people listed as benficiaries of FSA in the government records.

"When the FSA was to be implement the government carried out a survey and recorded 3.8crore people in need of food security. They then realised that it contradicts with their own claim of poverty reduction so now efforts are on to remove those listed in the FSA," said Mistry.