Bathinda June 18
The standing parliamentary committee on agriculture headed by MP Basudev Acharia will visit Jajjal, a cancer-hit village in Talwandi Sabo, to obtain a first-hand account of the lives of those afflicted by the disease.
Nachhattar Singh, member of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, said the residents had decided to speak about the “injustice” meted out to them. “Jajjal, Malkana and Laleana villages were the first to raise the issue of the alarming rise in the number of cancer cases about a decade ago. We don’t need just a hospital. The government should tell us what has led to the spread of the disease in the area, that has not even spared our children,” he said.
The committee members would also visit Mehma Sarja village in Goniana where they will interact with a group of 15 big, marginal and small farmers on the impact of fertilisers and pesticides on agriculture. Shingara Singh Mann, BKU district (Ugraha), said he would talk of Punjab’s agricultural crisis.
“The Punjab Government has neither given relief to cancer victims, nor families of debt-ridden farmers pushed to suicide,” he claimed. He said he would discuss excessive use of fertilisers, suicide by farmers and rehabilitation of families of suicide victims with the committee members.
Kheti Virasat Mission’s executive director Umendra Dutt said the committee should hold public hearings to know of the devastation caused by pesticides. Dutt said Punjabis faced a serious threat from environmental toxicity.
In an earlier study, scientists from PAU, Ludhiana, had said the rapid spread of cancer in Punjab was owing to arsenic in water that led to abnormal cell growth in human body.
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