ASIA/INDIA - No school for children in living in hovels in Bangalore who have to go out with their mothers to fetch water at night

Bangalore (Agenzia Fides) - Because there is no water in the hovels in Bangalore, in southern India, many little girls cannot go to school.
Women and children have to walk as far as three to five kilometres to find water. Sometimes to do the washing they have to go into the streets at 1 in the morning and are too tired to go to school the next day.
“There is no peace in these communities. We queue for water at night for a can of water. Some girls are molested”, says Rahat Begum, community leader and coordinator of the NGO Azione e i Servizi Volontari (AVAS), with which she has worked for 34 years in the hovels of Bangalore.
The city is known as the capital of information technology in India. Not far from the poor villages Indian and foreign high technology companies open offices, employing thousands of university students. A stone's throw away there is another India. The hovels are the homes of the “untouchables” the dalits, the most excluded people of the Hindu caste system, rejected by the rest of the community. In Bangalore about one fifth of the 6.5 million people live in 365 shacks mostly without water or sanitation.
At Sundamnagar, a community of about 300 families, mostly without a job or a very precarious one, AVAS purchased a piece of land and is teaching women about the use of water and healthcare, and has set up a water-sanitation committee in every community. Most of the committee members are women.
The women run a system at MRS Palya, while the men watch television all day at home and those with jobs spend most of their wages on alcohol.
At MRS Palya, the residents only have water for a couple of hours a day and it seems to be sufficient for every family famiglia. They have time to have a bath and do the housework. The neighbourhood is cleaner because the homes have sanitation and enough water.
Before little girls were too tired to go to school after fetching water at night with their mothers. Now they attend school regularly.
The environment is clean, there is no pollution. Before people often fell ill, now the people are specialising in information technology and business management.(AP) (17/10/2007 Agenzia Fides; Righe:35; Parole:435)