Agitated tea estate workers halt traffic.
Thrissur: The traffic through the state highway between Malakkappara in Kerala and Valpparai in Tamil Nadu was halted for nearly seven hours on Friday as tea estate workers in Valpparai struck work and held a road roko following a gruesome incident in which a four-year-old child was mauled to death by a leopard on Thursday night. The workers demanded proper security for their quarters from wild animals like leopards and elephants.
The boy, Saeedull, was nabbed by a leopard that was hiding in the tea estate near the quarters as soon as his mother put him near the back door of the quarters after giving him a bath. The mother turned away and stepped into the kitchen and within seconds, the leopard pounced on the child, and caught him by the neck and fled. As his mother yelled for help, the workers residing in the area conducted a search and found the body of the child 300 metres away from the quarters in the estate with the head detached from the body.
Saeedull is the son of Mushraf Ali and Sadiya from Jharkhand who had been working in the estate for the past two years. The Tamil Nadu Government has announced a compensation of Rs 3 lakhs for the family and Rs 50,000 was handed over on Friday. The road roko and hartal in Valparai estate was called after the Tamil Nadu Revenue and Forest officials gave an assurance that the workers would be given protection from wild animals. It is learnt from tea workers in Malakkappara that workers from north India were increasingly coming to work at the tea estates recently.
The poorest among the poor take up work as temporary employees as they get a place to stay in the small quarters mostly with single rooms thatched with tin sheets. Vazhachal DFO N Rajesh told DC that as some areas of the tea estate jutted into the forest, the safest way to give accommodation to these workers was by shifting all the quarters to a specific locality and giving protection using solar fencing in those areas.
