Flood relief centres urge people to go home
Reconstruction, loan sharking and malaria are the next challenges.
Dhaka (AsiaNews) Monsoon rains which flooded one third of the country are in a lull. Waters are retreating from affected areas, but levels are still dangerous.
"Floodwaters are receding faster than we expected, but the recession of water from low-lying areas of the capital is comparatively slow due to lack of necessary drainage channels," said Selim Bhuiyan, Executive Engineer of the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre, "and the water in the city's low-lying areas, particularly those flanked by the river Balu, will take at least all of August to recede."
Still, flood relief centres have already started telling people to go home. At a centre set up in Kadamtala Purba Basabo High School, authorities are already planning to reopen and expect flood victims to leave. Headmaster Mohammad Kalimullah said: "We are slowly building the pressure to prepare them mentally for leaving the centre."
But many people are still unprepared to go. "We have been asked to leave the centre by tomorrow but my house at East Manda is still under water," said Rahima Bibi who, with her disabled daughter, took shelter in the school at the height of the crisis.
"It is not true that water did not recede. They are just making lame excuses to stay at the flood centres," said Hasan Syed Tahen, chairman of both the Manda Union and the governing body of the Manda Haider Ali High School. "Most of the flood victims living below the poverty line do not want to leave the centre because they are receiving relief aid."
Father Carlo Dotti, PIME missioner in Dhaka, has a different take on the situation. "If people are sleeping in the streets on canvas cloth and under metal sheets," he told AsiaNews, "that is because houses are still unfit for human habitation. Otherwise," he added, "Bangladeshis tend to stick it out in their homes, literally come hell or high water; after all, they are used to drought and floods. Our cook, in the seminary, just added bricks under his bed as water rose. Only when it was too close for comfort did he move in with us."
For flood victims going home implies finding the resources to rebuild lives and survive. This means money, which people do not normally have, hence it means too often borrowing form loan sharks.
Peasants in an around Koizuri tell how they had to accept interest rates as high as 104%. Weavers doing piece-work paid on a daily basis have been forced to work free a few days per month just to pay off their debts.
But that is not all. As waters recede drains turn into open sewers where mosquitoes breed in the millions. Malaria outbreaks become a distinct possibility. For this reason, Dhaka City Corporation sounded the alarm informing the United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian assistance of the problem. In the meantime, it has launched anti-mosquito drives to pre-empt it.
Health Ministry figures show that over 700 people have died in the flooding from different causes. The Health Department Control Room reports over 5,500 cases of water-borne diseases like dysentery, pneumonia, jaundice, and skin and eye infections.
Paradoxically, if the central and southern parts of the country face severe monsoon-related flooding, the north is going through a severe drought. In some villages irrigation pumps are kept working throughout the night to contain crop damage. (MA)
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24/08/2004
