Between rock and hard place: housing dilemma of urban poor in Vijayawada

Tragic rockslide in Vijayawada highlights the dangers of living on hill slopes, prompting calls for government intervention.

On August 30, the Andhra Pradesh government announced that it would distribute social security pensions to the beneficiaries on August 31 instead of the usual September 1 as it was a Sunday. Bollem Sravani, a young mother of two, thinks, in hindsight, that had they postponed the date, perhaps her mother-in-law would have lived today.

Ms. Sravani, her husband Siva Sankar and their two children, aged 3 and 6, live in a dilapidated rented house not very far from the site in Moghalrajpuram in Vijayawada where rockslides killed at least six people following extremely heavy rains on the night of August 30. One of the victims is her mother-in-law, Bollem Lakshmi (49). The others are Jampana Annapurna (59), Meghana (25), Santosh (18), Yashwant (18) and P. Lal (38).

Of the six families, only Meghana’s family, on which the boulder fell, was provided with a house in the Rajarajeswari Peta as compensation. The second house, where Yashwant and Santosh had arrived as tenants just the night before the incident, was damaged too, but his family has not received any amount, says the house owner K. Venkateswara Rao.

The deaths were some of the most ghastly rockslide fatalities reported in the city in the recent past.

Even though an estimated 3 lakh people live on the hill slope areas in the East and West constituencies in Vijayawada city, and stray incidents of rocks falling on houses get reported every year from the One Town and Indrakeeladri areas, the occurrence of deaths is rare.

However, this time, apart from the six deaths, the loss includes damages to 96 houses, making it the first fatal rockslide and the most devastating accident to ever occur in Moghalrajpuram.

The pieces of rocks and rubble that lie on the road, uncleared by the authorities even after two months, continue to remain an ugly reminder of the nightmare of an accident, making it even more difficult to move on. The rocks fell right in front of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation’s (VMC) 18th Ward Office in Division 5.