200,000 Bangladesh cyclone victims till ‘homeless’

Nine months after losing their homes to a powerful cyclone, 200,000 Bangladeshis are living in “inhuman” conditions on river embankments with no resolution in sight, aid groups said Tuesday, reports AFP.
Cyclone Aila, which tore through southern Bangladesh in May last year, killed 300 people and destroyed 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) of roads and embankments, none of which have been rebuilt, the groups said in a statement.
“More than 100,000 people from Khulna and Satkhira districts are still living in inhuman conditions… and an additional 100,000 people have been displaced,” the statement from 18 charities, including Oxfam and Care, said.
Southern Bangladesh is criss-crossed with scores of rivers and small canals which flood twice a day, at high tide.
Since the 1960s, the government has built a network of embankments along these rivers and canals to prevent the salt water flooding low-lying areas, allowing millions of people to cultivate the land.
But during Aila, most these embankments were washed away, allowing saline water to flood in, destroying farmland and forcing people to take shelter on the few embankments and roads that remained intact.
“The response and rehabilitation works that we have been continuing in the affected regions (will be) a waste of limited resources unless embankments are reconstructed and repaired by March 2010,” the statement added.
Areas affected by the cyclone still flood twice daily at high tide, which contaminates drinking water and makes farming impossible, leaving families reliant on emergency food and water distribution.
Last year, the government made an international appeal for 1.15 billion dollars to donors for help with post-Aila reconstruction, including rebuilding embankments.
But no reconstruction work has yet begun and with Bangladesh’s summer starting in April, which will usher in months of monsoon rains, there is concern construction work will stall until the dry season, starting in October.
“That means more than 200,000 people will have to remain homeless for an indefinite time-period, which is inhuman and a serious issue of human and fundamental rights violation,” the statement said.
The statement was released as Bangladesh’s government meets key international donors for a two-day conference, which began Monday.
The government’s secretary at the Food and Disaster Management Ministry, Mukhlesur Rahman, told AFP: “We have already invited tender to build the embankments, we hope the work will be completed by March.”

Courtesy of AFP via The News Today