Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 6 (IANS): The tribal community from Attappadi in Kerala's Palakkad district on Monday shared their woes with a delegation led by Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan. The delegation was visiting the tribal hamlet which reported deaths of infants last month.

Around five tribal children died in a week's time. Addressing the media after their visit, Satheesan said that it was unfortunate that the Pinarayi Vijayan government had done very little to solve the problems of the tribal population.

"Gone are the days when the then Oommen Chandy government (2015) would hold a mini-cabinet meeting in Attappadi and launch a number of schemes, after taking stock of the situation. Today what we came to know is that most of the schemes have been discontinued by this government," he said.

He added that the scheme of providing a Rs 2,000-monthly assistance to all the pregnant women here from their third month of pregnancy to be continued for the next 15 months, which included money for post-natal care, has all been discontinued.

"We recently saw the State Health Minister visiting the tribal hamlets. We noticed that the nodal officer of this place was first transferred after which the minister paid a visit. One fails to understand why that was done. And the outcome after the visit of the minister was the withdrawal of a few facilities."

He also said that the hospital for the tribal's only has junior doctors and no specialists. Most of them just refer patients to state-run hospitals far away from their settlement areas where there are poor ambulance services.

The delegation had top leaders of the allies of the Congress-led Opposition.