Success of ‘YUWA India’ football team despite all the odds might have brought it into limelight but without making much difference to its fate. After facing the threat to lose the original playground at Rukka village of Ormanjhi block, the team of sports enthusiast tribal girls has been struck by another misfortune and this time from unexpected quarters.
Apathy is so that the brand new bus donated to the organisation by Union Rural Development Minister, Jairam Ramesh in August has broken down and remains stranded at a workshop for repair. Disheartening is the fact that the snag is not the first since it has been handed over to the team and the instance has become quite a frequent phenomenon in just two months of time span.
“The bus often develops snags disrupting our practice. It gets shut down sometime or its tyres got heated on other occasions. The bus has been parked at the workshop for last several days leaving the girls in lurch,” said Neha Baxla, Team Yuwa’s young coach while expressing her anguish to The Pioneer on Wednesday.
Ramesh, after coming to know the success the team scored in Spain by bagging the bronze medal in the Under-14 all-women Gasteiz Cup early this year, had donated `10 lakh from his MPlAD funds to buy the mini-bus for the team members to ferry them to their practice ground. Also it is the team that has to bear the costs coming on its operation such as fuel, driver and repairing expenses which prove as additional burden for it.
After much hue and cry over ill-treatment meted out to the girls by the local officials in clearing passport applications of the young tribal girls, mostly from nearby villages, the Jharkhand Government had allocated five acres of land at Dahu village, about eight kilometers away from their original place.
“The land given as practice ground is very far from Rukka and much of our time is wasted in traveling in the absence of the bus. That’s why we were looking for a 10 acre plot so that a residential facility can be built for the girls. There is nothing else than the piece of land which is not much beneficial for us at present,” added Baxla.
The land has also not been allotted to the organisation but the Gram Pradhan of the village. This is also proving detrimental to the team’s idea to go ahead with its own residential set up as the land possession is not with the ‘Yuwa India’. On the hindsight the original play ground at Rukka village is also shrinking all the time as the land owner has begun cultivation and other activities. “It is not more than 50 decimal of land that is left now. It is already on the radar of the land dealers,” said the coach-cum-local manager.
Ramesh had also expressed his desire to build a football academy for the girls and expected to visit the place again later this month. The team is planning to narrate their apathy to him.
“The changes are no where near what were expected and appeared in the beginning. We are very disappointed. Though his programme is not yet confirmed, we would tell Jairam Ramesh our problem when he comes here,” said Baxla.