Overlevende efter oversvømmelser i provinsen, Sindh, i Pakistan føler ikke, de har modtaget den hjælp, de har brug for. Hjem, husdyr og afgrøder er ødelagt og sygdomme begynder at sprede sig.
SANGHAR, 10 November 2011 (IRIN): Flood survivors across Pakistan’s Sindh province say they have received very little help, even as disease begins to spread, and people who have lost crops, livestock and homes wonder how they are to survive.
For most, even the recent festival of Eid-ul-Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and is usually celebrated by sacrificing an animal such as a goat and engaging in family celebrations that include sharing gifts and meals, was a joyless affair.
“My mother-in-law, who is in her 70s, has high fever and tremors. But we can not afford to get her to a doctor or buy any medicine,” said Sumbul Bibi, who is also concerned her three small children are not getting enough food.
“No supplies have been delivered to our area for weeks, and we lost our animals and crops in the flood, so we have barely anything to eat beyond some dried dates and a little rice donated by a neighbour,” she said from her village in Sanghar, one of the worst-hit districts in the southern Sindh province.
They had been “very eager to celebrate Eid” as she and her husband feared it could be his mother’s last, but “we could only put together a small, very skimpy meal to eat together”.
Mosquitoes everywhere
Even in the town of Sanghar itself, about 230 km northeast of Karachi, some pools of stagnant water still stand – a reminder of the virtual submersion of the city until last month.
“We can see mosquitoes hovering above these ditches where water stands, and malaria is spreading here quite fast,” said Nawaz Ahmed, 40.
Organizations monitoring the situation are just as concerned. In a press release issued after a fact-finding mission to Sanghar and the neighbouring district of Nawabshah, the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) noted “a plethora (overflod) of problems facing the rain-affected populations of the two districts.
The rains have devastated houses and livelihoods, destroying crops and killing livestock on a large scale. Children and old people are in particularly bad shape and vulnerable to disease.
HRCP expressed grave concern about the vulnerability of people without adequate shelter, especially children and the elderly. It said people were having difficulties at banks accessing funds donated by the government.
“Many people have been unable to access relief, and we have made a complaint about this to provincial authorities,” an administrative official in Sanghar, who asked not to be named, told IRIN.
Asghar Leghari, a member of a Sindh-based civil society organization, the Peoples’ Accountability Commission on Floods (PACF), told IRIN: “Things are really bad for flood-affected people across Sindh who have received very little support from the government, and are surviving in a miserable situation.”
Stuck in camps
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