A moral dilemma

Classes at Government Degree College that has become a shelter for flood survivors were supposed to begin in August.

SUKKUR: Professor Bashir Ahmed Ramejo is facing a moral dilemma. He is a religious man who believes in charity and helping the distressed. He is also an educationist and the dean of Government Degree College, Sukkur, where classes have been halted.

Classes at his institution, which caters to some 1,260 students – ranging from HSC to Masters, were supposed to commence from the beginning of August. However, the building has become one of many in Sukkur serving as  a shelter to flood victims that have fled submerged areas and those which were under threat of inundation. Ramejo’s college is currently sheltering some 600 registered families – and hundreds of others who are not registered.

Prof Ramejo is optimistic that the government will announce the shifting of the IDPs to the myriad tent cities that have cropped up in Sukkur – a city that is catering to a majority of those affected by the floods, not only in Sindh, but from Balochistan.

There are rumours to this effect, he says wistfully.

However, Ramejo is reluctant to frame that notion in the form of a demand.

“They are, after all, affected people,” he says – careful not to sound insensitive, “they have no place to go”.  He says that he and the teachers and lecturers of the college have voluntarily immersed themselves in helping administrating the issues being faced by the IDPs, most of whom have lost everything they owned.

“But what will happen of the students?”

Shortly after the floods hit, the Sindh government decided to transform schools and colleges, aside from some parks and recreational spots into shelters for the thousands of IDPs that moved to the major cities such as Sukkur and Khairpur.

However, in the haste and shock of the extent of the disaster, the authorities seemed to have forgotten what to do with the thousands of students that study at the schools and colleges. It is not possible, of course, for the classes to commence under the current circumstances.

Prof Ramejo offers a few solutions of his own. “In any case it is Ramazan – and classes and educational activities are usually at a minimum. It would not take a lot to catch up the time lost if classes were to commence after Eid.”

“Many students have contacted me asking when classes will begin. I tell them that they will, soon, hopefully.”

Yet that notion appears to be more wishful than a realistic.

Prof Ramejo himself talks about the infrastructural damage the college building has undergone since the IDPs arrived. The furniture has been broken, the fittings damaged. Then there are also sanitation issues, as IDPs who live in the classrooms use the rooms as bathrooms – given that the bathrooms themselves have clogged up – despite the fact that UNHCR has set up blue-coloured makeshift outhouses.

In stark contrast to his tidy and organized office, the sizable campus outside is a mess. Desperate IDPs occupy not only the classes, but the central lawn, the driveway and even the quarters.

“It’ll take us weeks to set the situation straight – and you know the government: if we order new fittings and furniture, who knows when it will come,” he says, contradicting his earlier optimism.

Asking not to be named, a UN official working in Sukkur admits that it can take up to six months before the IDPs are shifted out of the schools, if not more.

The problem is that shifting them to the tent cities has problems of its own, he says. “Many are reluctant to move given that at the schools and colleges at least they have a proper roof, as opposed to living in a tent.”

Meanwhile, the government is reported to still be mulling over how to move the IDPs from the hundreds of educational institutions they currently occupy. Given the sensitivity of the issue, they cannot push it. Nor, perhaps, should they. One plan has it that they could decrease the food rations to give the IDPs incentive to move – but that will have moral repercussions given the fact that these are survivors of the country’s most potent natural calamity.

But then what of Prof Ramejo’s students, and the thousands of others? Should they be added to the list of flood victims?

A moral dilemma indeed.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 27^th, 2010.