On 7th day, rescue teams still digging parallel pit in Alwar

Alwar: Even after seven days, the rescue teams have not been able to pull out the six-year-old girl trapped in a borewell at Bairair village in Alwar district.

This is a clear indication of the state's lack of preparedness to meet such emergencies as well as willingness to learn from past mistakes.

No concrete measure has been taken to prevent such incidents, though at least three such accidents were reported from Dausa in 2015 alone.

Action against owners of such uncovered borewells has been at best minimal as they have continued to lay such death traps for children.

The district administration does not have equipment or manpower to deal with similar emergencies, and rely too much on civil defence forces and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

These agencies too lack equipment to conduct a rescue from a borewell as the most recent accident has shown. This is a major cause of increasing fatalities.

In the past, when such accidents happened in Naugawa village of Neemachin and Bairer village in Rajgarh, the NDRF team, which conducted the rescue operation, failed to save trapped children.

In a similar instance, reported from Biharipura village in Lalsoth sub-division of the Dausa district, it was the villagers who managed to rescue a two-year-old girl.

Local resident Nadan Singh said that it was a shame that the authorities have failed to pull out the trapped girl even after seven days. The government should provide training and equipment to NDRF and civil defence rescue teams, he said.

According to NDRF Ajmer deputy commandant Amar Singh, the rescue teams have made all efforts with available resources to rescue the girl.

He said the villagers had poured water and also put sand inside the borewell. The sand becomes hard inside the borewell after three days. This has made the rescue operation difficult.