Twenty years is a long time to spend waiting for help, yet over 500,000 people maimed or affected by the world's worst industrial disaster have received only Rs.200 ($4) each per year towards their rehabilitation, says a study.
The report by the Fact Finding Mission (FFM) on Bhopal, where thousands died on the night of Dec 2-3, 1984 after inhaling methyl-isocynate gas that leaked from the Union Carbide's pesticide plant, said the government had failed to rehabilitate the survivors.
Taking exception to the "dismal rehabilitation efforts" by the government, the report claimed that a paltry sum of Rs.200 per person per year was spent for rehabilitation of victims and survivors.
"This sums up the effectiveness of the programme," said the report, which reviewed the government's medical, economic, social and environmental rehabilitation schemes that were launched "six years after the disaster".
"Out of the actual expenditure of Rs.2.5 billion ($58 million) shown by the government till March 1999 towards rehabilitation, only around 60 percent actually got spent on the schemes. The average overheads for implementing the schemes were well cover 50 percent.
"Thus the monetary value of the benefits made available to the victims works out to around 30 percent or about Rs.800 million ($18 million). Over an eight year period from 1990-98 it works out to just Rs.200 per person per year for 500,000 victims/survivors," the report said.
It said the problem with the government's medical rehabilitation was that over a third of all the budgeted public health expenditure was spent on salaries and administrative costs besides capital expenditure.
"There was also a wastage of medical equipment worth Rs.23 million," it said.
Also, funds meant for economic rehabilitation were either unutilised or mismanaged and very few gas leak survivors were actually provided livelihood opportunities, the report compiled by environmental and social activists alleged.
Besides, the government also failed to realise its objective of constructing houses and supplying essential commodities like nutritious food to children and pregnant women, affected by the gas leak.
The government's programme to provide improved cooking medium to gas-affected families never took off, it said.
--Indo-Asian News Service