Sinduri village has a history of patients suffering and dying after failing to get medical aid on time.
Highlights
- No connecting roads from Jammu to villages Mobali, Kutkantha and Sinduri
- Nearly 3000 people affected due to lack of connecting roads
- Rules say every village with population of 250 or more should have a road
Barely 15 km from Jammu, it takes more than two hours for villagers of Sinduri to get to the nearest hospital.
A thousand of them and 2,000 more in the adjoining villages of Mobali and Kutkantha have no connecting road.
Jameela who is pregnant has been forced to migrate to Jammu to avoid the steep 4 km trek to the nearest road
"We are happy but extremely scared, because we will have to put her on a cot, five people will have to carry that and trek all the way to the hospital", said Parveena, a relative of Jameela.
The nearest road to Sinduri is a 4 km-trek away.
Sinduri village has a history of patients suffering and dying after failing to get medical aid on time.
"I was pregnant and there was no vehicle. I was carried on a cot to the hospital and I suffered abortion. Doctors said had I reached the hospital 10 minutes earlier, the baby could have been saved," said Irshada Biwi.
According to government rules, there should be a road for every village with a population of 250 people. But for the 3,000 people in Sindoori and neighbouring Mobali and Kutkantha, it doesn't seem to apply.
"When there is no road, patients suffer the most. It is the government's priority to connect the villages. Earlier villages with a population of 500 were considered for road connectivity but now any village with just 250 people will be connected," said public works minister Abdul Rehman Veeri said, promising to have the villages connected "soon".