Aid agency pleads for 500,000 Indians displaced by flood

ActionAid Internationals is calling upon donors to help victims of flood in Northeast Indian state of Assam as heavy outpouring on monsoon rains for several days have now displaced half million peoples from their homes.

The ActionAid assessment team said that there is an immediate need for food, drinking water or purifying agents, animal fodder, tarpaulins, safe water storage vessels, hygiene kits, temporary toilets and mosquito nets.

According to government officials, about 500,000 people have been displaced from their homes, one man died Saturday after his boat was capsized near the biggest river island of Majuli in Jorhat district. The worst affected districts reported are Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Bongaigaon, Baksa, Barpeta, Kamrup and Nalbari.

The heavy rains in the foothills of the Himalayas resulted in the swelling up of the huge Brahmaputra river and its tributaries flowing above their normal levels causing flood in towns and villages along the rivers.

ActionAid said its staff have carried out an assessment in Lakhimpur district where 98,000 people have been affected by the floods. They found people sheltering in schools and in makeshift camps on the Matmora and Moderguri embankments. Flood water has entered most schools and colleges and they are no longer safe to use as shelters. Families on the embankments have made temporary shelters from tarpaulin or galvanised iron sheets, but in the continuous heavy rain these makeshift shelters are inadequate.

"There is no drinking water and no toilets. Many families have no containers for collecting water even if they could find it," the assessment team said.

The team said that there is an immediate need for food, drinking water or purifying agents, animal fodder, tarpaulins, safe water storage vessels, hygiene kits, temporary toilets and mosquito nets.

Local officials have been providing food to flood victims living in relief camps located on higher ground.

But no relief measures had been taken for the thousands of cattle and livestock trapped in the floods, local correspondents told BBC News.
In Majuli, the world's largest inhabited river island, a breach in the embankment left more than 100,000 people stranded.

The situation in lower Assam districts of Baksa, Barpeta and Udalguri has also worsened following release of water from Kurishu dam in neighbouring country Bhutan.

The government officials Wednesday said the flood has receded but rehabilitating the victims will take sometime.

Swapan, a programme officer in ActionAid's Guwahati office, said: "Floods in Assam are an annual affair. Yet the government's rescue and relief operations are not geared up to reach people in time, resulting in huge losses of property and livestock in addition to loss of human lives."