MIRPURKHAS/TANDO ALLAHYAR: Sitting on a borrowed cot under the open sky on the side of a link road that terminates in his village, the elderly Bheeko Kohli describes how he has gone hungry for the past three days. Crying, he points to a small quantity of wheat lying on the ground that is now too wet to be consumed.
Behind him lies a cotton crop that is rotting in floodwaters in Ghulam Rasool Shah Jillani village of Tando Allahyar district.Bheeko is a farm worker, but not all landowners have helped their workers financially during this time. As in other natural disasters, many of the rural poor have been left to fend for themselves.
Their fragile homes, made of thatched straw, have collapsed. Escaping to higher ground, living under the open sky or braving the conditions of crowded relief camps — if they can reach them — are their only option.
The cattle they cherish, the source of their livelihood, are without shelter too and vulnerable to theft, lack of fodder and to disease because of the unavailability of medication.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority, 4.9 million people have been affected by this summer’s rains in 22 districts of Sindh.
Last year, it was flooding along the right bank of the Indus that resulted in displacement of millions of people and massive losses to the agricultural sector.
The damage from this year’s monsoon has been mainly in left-bank districts where no contingency plan seems to have been in place. The situation has been worsening with each passing moment because rainfall has been continuing unabated, in some areas for 48 hours.
“It’s chaos,” says Dr Irfan Gul Magsi, a former provincial minister from Tando Allahyar. “People are quarrelling among themselves to divert water from their lands to others. The government is missing from the scene while the rains are devastating everything.”
The Left Bank Outfall Drain and other drains branching out from the Indus are flowing to their full capacity and in some areas are overflowing. The provincial irrigation authorities have simply been unable to cope with them.
“It is beyond our capacity to control the situation,” admits a senior official of the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority.
“We have asked district administrations to evacuate people located around surface and saline water drains.”
Locals also blame the authority for failing to clear the LBOD and other drains of weeds and silt over the years.
With water overflowing from them at various locations, roads connecting towns and cities are under water. It is hard to differentiate between roads and the riverine plains along them, which have begun to resemble marshes.
Travelling towards Mirpurkhas, Tando Allahyar or Badin, the scene on both sides of the road resembles last year’s devastating floods. Large swathes of land, mostly agricultural, are submerged.
In Tando Allahyar, a relatively fertile district, lush green fields of cotton, paddy, vegetables and fodder have been washed away. Sugarcane has a greater chance of survival, but if water remains stagnant in fields canes will start to rot. Evidence of this can already been seen in the roots, which have started turning black.
This year, Sindh was set to have a bumper crop of cotton. Acreage had increased because farmers had been receiving a relatively high price for their yields. But according to the province’s agriculture department, 55 per cent of its cultivated area is now submerged and Sindh stands to lose about two million bales of cotton.
The aftermath of downpours has also exposed the claims of the NDMA and Provincial Disaster Management Authority of being prepared for disaster mitigation.
“Look at this, even a donkey will refuse to eat it, how can we consume it?” asks a peasant woman, Shama, holding wheat grains in her palm. “We need tents for shelter due to the incessant rains,” she adds.
Notwithstanding these organisations’ claims that they have provided relief, the affected population is facing a serious shortage of food and tents despite forecasts of heavy rain.
Improvised tents pitched by the population dot the scene in rain-affected districts. Furious rain victims are blocking railway crossings and main roads, demanding relief goods and lambasting revenue officials for denying them tents.
“They have provided tents to influential people who have even kept their livestock in them while the same are being denied to us because we are poor and have no influence,” says Farooque Brohi, a daily-wage earner at a juice shop that has been shut down because of the rains.
Farooque’s colony in Mirpurkhas district’s Digri city is under three to four feet of rainwater. “How can we live in this polluted environment with the threat of mosquitoes? Other people may have uninterrupted power supply systems, but we don’t. It’s very difficult for us to live in our home.”
Conditions in relief camps are not much better. Around 2,000 people are housed in one camp located at the Government Degree College in Tando Jan Mohammad in Mirpurkhas. Livestock, women, children and cooking facilities share single rooms, and ration is almost finished.
Women have delivered babies without health facilities or drugs. There are no doctors, but at least four pregnant women need prenatal check-up, and lack of privacy has left them in an uncomfortable position.
“My daughter gave birth to a boy five days ago after we reached this camp. The baby needs powdered milk until his mother starts feeding him, but it is not available,” one depressed grandmother explains.
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