Relief in Charsadda trickles in slowly

CHARSADDA: The room reeked of stale air and sweat. Over a dozen women sat on a single charpai in the sweltering heat, some lying wearily on floor mats. Outside, the families sat even more distraught, having been unable to find a room.

Nasreen, a 50-year-old mother of six, had been sleeping in the verandah for over 20 days. She complained of unfair treatment during the food distribution, being bitten by mosquitoes every night and bearing the stench of a nearby alley that children used as a toilet.

The women were at a flood relief camp set up in a government high school in Prang, Charsadda. Ever since the floods deprived them of all belongings and means of livelihood on July 28, they have been taking refuge here. But with up to 60 people sharing a single room, inadequate food supply and outbreak of diseases, their patience was stretching thin.

The village of Prang in Charsadda has become home to more than a 100 relief camps for flood victims, scattered about in small fields, schools and colleges. Most of the survivors come from the severely affected areas of the region: Shabara, Old Charsadda Bazaar, Nisatta, Kharbela Karoona and Majukay Babara.

The camps provide direly needed cover to the survivors who had once been successful farmers, small business owners, teachers and daily wage earners. But they are testament more to the individual resolve of volunteers and humanitarian organisations than government efforts. If anything, they are miserable reminders of the government’s inability to provide relief in the area.

The most widely echoed complaint of these survivors is of having received little or no aid from the federal or provincial government. There is resentment against the MPA (PF-17) and MNA of the area for not having visited these camps, or taking long-term measures to address natural disasters in the area.

“This is not the first time floods have come here,” said Pervaiz Jaan, a school teacher, with anger clearly etched on his face. “Every year, people who live close to the rivers have to suffer. The least the government can do is give us retaining walls to protect us from future floods.”

In the government boys’ high school in Saparkhel, Prang, around 900 flood victims have been living for more than 20 days, most of whom are angry at the DCO for sending them stale daal (lentil) for iftari that has caused diarrhoea among many. They also accused him of mismanaging relief funds and are urging an inquiry against him.

A little further away in a football stadium, some 85 families took shade from the scorching heat in a veranda. One woman hurled accusations at the organisers for pocketing aid instead of distributing it. Another had a deep gash in her hand from an aid distribution ceremony earlier that had turned so violent that people ended up breaking a glass door.

In the absence of government aid, the local community of Prang is struggling to fill in the gap, offering their bathrooms, food, gas cylinders and sleeping mats. Volunteer organisations like Unicef, Al Khidmat and Medicine Sans Frontiers are also playing a role, albeit one that is not up to the scale of the damage. Every day, children in a camp inside a government college wait for a young Unicef volunteer, Saima Siddiqui, who travels from Peshawar to play ludo, carrom and frisbee with the children.

Though aid trickles in at a snail’s pace, survivors are more hopeful for hard cash so they can quickly rebuild their homes and their lives. Their biggest demand is not aid, but rehabilitation.

But it is the hardest demand to fulfil. Ghulam Ali, assistant project officer for Interfaith League Against Poverty (ILAP), was busy setting up a tent village for 200 families in the football stadium. Even though emergency aid can only be sustained for three months, he said, the possibility of the families moving out of the tent village anytime soon was slim.

He added, “Unless there is serious effort put in to rebuilding homes and lives, these people are in it for the long haul.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2010.