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Student-delegates subjected to midnight trauma
Some people apparently don’t believe in the age-old dictum-once bitten twice shy. A classic instance in this is the Organising Committee of the International Children Film Festival of which Hyderabad is the permanent host.
The sordid reality of Children’s Film Festival
Hyderabad: Some people apparently don’t believe in the age-old dictum-once bitten twice shy. A classic instance in this is the Organising Committee of the International Children Film Festival of which Hyderabad is the permanent host.
The organisers of the ongoing 19th edition added yet another dubious distinction to last edition’s faux pas. They shamed their image further over the weekend when students from various districts in Telangana, who are participating in the prestigious event, complained that they were forcibly evacuated from the hotel that was originally allocated to them.
Recalling the shocking incident, a coordinator, on the condition of anonymity, said, “On Saturday, soon after we reached the hotel after the festival’s inauguration, we were flabbergasted that our luggage was thrown out of our allocated rooms, which were eventually allotted to some other delegates, who arrived at the eleventh hour. In the melee, one of our members lost three tolas of gold among several baggage’s that went missing.”
The coordinator lamented that her queries fell on deaf ears and the hotel management informed that rooms were not allotted to them at all in the first place. The alarming aspect is that it is a prime hotel that is just yonder of the Chief Minister’s camp office
“The children were tired and ended up sleeping in the lobby’s floor. The fight with management continued for over three hours and students and teachers from 66 government schools across Telangana were left in the lurch. We had to call the Deputy Education officer in the wee to settle the issue. It was only then that we were shifted to the nearby star hotel.”
However, this was not the end of trauma for the participants. The student-coordinator added that those who could not spot their luggage were forced to attend the event in the same clothes on Sunday. “Rather than set the finest of examples to the dignitaries coming from abroad, our own students are left in the lurch. The enthusiasm of taking part in the festival has fizzled out,” she said.
Scribes run helter-skelter
If the student-delegates were treated so shabbily the media personnel covering the prestigious event were subject to an equally sordid treatment. Apart from accommodation goof-ups, journalists did not receive their accreditation clearances prior to the event. A Chennai-based journalist Vasudevan said that though he had applied for accreditation well in time, till date he had not received it. He was also clueless about the events apart from screenings as no information was provided about the same.
The booklet containing the schedule of events and synopsis of movies and its director is still not ready. The less said about the official website http://cfsindia.org/19icffi/ the better because it has not been updated and there is no link or information to the venue and workshop details.
By Navin Pivhal
