Woman farmer Kamala Pujari fails to get pucca house

Bhubaneswar/Jeypore: Woman farmer of Patraputa in Koraput district Kamala Pujari, who had brought laurels for Odisha by winning the ‘Equator Initiative Award’ in Johannesburg of South Africa in 2002, is living with her six-member family in a kutcha house despite the reality that a ladies hostel building in the campus of Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) has been named after her today.

Kamala, the 70-year-old woman farmer, stated, “I don’t own a house under the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY). My six-member family have been staying in a thatched house, which was built by my husband.”

Curiously, the woman farmer of Patraputa village in Koraput visited Bhubaneswar today as the State government had invited her to attend a foundation stone laying ceremony for the OUAT’s new ladies hostel building named after her.

At the stone laying function, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik even felicitated Kamala with a flower bouquet and shawl.

Also read: OUAT hostel named after famous woman farmer Kamala Pujari

Though Kamala and her family come under the economically backward category and work as daily wage labourers in farmland, she has failed to get a pucca house.

Notably, Kamala had been thrown to oblivion for past few years after 2004 when she was honoured by the Odisha government after winning the Equator Initiative Award’ in Johannesburg.

Commenting on the matter, BJD spokesperson Rabi Narayan Nanda, who was born in Patraputa village in Koraput and was still ignorant about the plight of Kamala till date, stated, “I would request the district administration as well as Odisha government to provide some sort of financial support to the woman farmer.”