Threat to children's rights, health!

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, May 16: Erecting a mobile phone tower at a place suitable for business for making quick buck may be a child’s play, but to understand its long-term ramifications may not.

In this cyber-age the child is at risk of radiation that is being emitted from the ever-increasing number of mobile towers being erected almost at every pace left unused. Tempting monetary offers from mobile companies seem to have aggravated the situation, posing a threat to human and animal health, besides plants. So much so that even children are not spared in the rash for minting money. They do not even bother to expose their children to notorious radiation. A glaring example of this is the move to erect a mobile tower of Reliance at a children’s park in the city.

At Ambikagiri Shishu Udyan, a children’s park located at bagiri in the Chandmari area in the city, an attempt has been made to erect a mobile tower. The people of the locality are a scary lot about health hazards of their children who use to play in the park as an when they get spare time, at least in the afternoon. The ill effects of radiation from mobile phone towers have already been a matter of debate among scientists and others.

The scared guardians of the locality moved the Gauhati High Court with the plea to scuttle the move to erect any mobile tower in the park as that may lead to health hazards for them and their children. As expected, the High Court on June 24 this year asked the mobile company not to erect any mobile tower there taking into consideration its would-be effects on the health of children and others living there. Law-abiding, those involved have stopped their work at the site. However, the base structure made by the company is still seen at the park, sticking out like a sore thumb. The base structure continues to pose a threat to the people living there as they are apprehensive that those involved in the move are yet to abandon their option of erecting a mobile tower there.

When looked at from that view, one may think the apprehension on the part of the people of the locality is not for nothing. The development (work for erecting a mobile tower at the children’s park) is not as simple as it has been thought. Of late, the role of the bagiri Unyan Samiti, which runs the park, in the move to erect the mobile tower has come to the fore. The people of the locality allege that the Unyan Samiti has already taken a fat amount as advance for the erection of the mobile tower. Since the structure constructed at the site is still to be dismantled, the local populace has every reason to suspect that the move is still to be abandoned.

However, the local people have decided not to allow erection of any mobile tower at the park. “If need be, we will move the High Court again,” they said.