Two years over, ordeal yet to be over
Thousands still passing miserable days in Aila -hit areas amid food, water crisis
Widowed by cyclone Aila two years ago, Amiron Bibi gives a bleak look sitting in front her makeshift hut on an embankment in Koira upazila of Khulna district, right, marooned people wade through waist-deep water beside their houses at Patakhali village that sees persistent waterlogging since the super cyclone hit the area on May 25 in 2009. Photo: STAR
"Nobody enquired about me during the two years of ordeal I have been suffering with my children. We have not got any financial help from any humanitarian organisation or NGO," sighed 58-year-old Amiron Bibi sitting in front of her dilapidated hut on an embankment in Koira upazila. Super cyclone Aila that killed Amiron's husband Aziz Gazi on this day two years ago, also made the family homeless and destitute. Like them, thousands of people are passing miserable days amid lack of food, safe drinking water and medical facilities following the natural disaster that ravaged coastal areas of Khulna and Satkhira districts on May 25 in 2009. According to official sources, 193 people died, over three lakh people became homeless, 2 lakh 43 thousand homesteads were destroyed and aman crop on over 97,000 acres of land was damaged by the onslaught of Aila. Saline water inundated 225 villages as 760 kilometres of embankments were destroyed in Dakope and Koira upazilas of Khulna district and Shyamnagar and Ashashuni upazilas of Satkhira district, the worst affected areas during the calamity. According to official sources, tidal surges caused by Aila inundated 62 villages of six unions in Koira upazila and damaged 23 embankments. Forty-one people were killed and around 70 percent homesteads, roads, educational institutions, mosques, temples, business shops and shrimp enclosures were totally destroyed. Aila caused extensive damage to shrimp enclosures worth Tk 500 crore, 180 schools and madrasas, 192 mosques and temples, 189 kilometres of metalled and non-metalled roads, 72 deep tube-wells, 23 fish farms, 44,000 homesteads, 1600 head of cattle and 13,000 poultry birds only in Koira upazila of Khulna district, says report on findings of a survey. Besides, the cyclone uprooted nearly 90 percent trees and washed away 400 shrimp enclosures of six unions in the upazila. But two years into the onslaught of the devastating storm, the government is yet to take any effective move for rehabilitation of the homeless and jobless people, locals said. The affected people are still suffering from want of food, safe drinking water, medical facilities and education, said Koira upazila parishad Chairman GM Mohsin Reza. Eleven villages in Dakkhin Bedkashi union under Koira upazila and three others villages in Kamarkhola and Sutarkhali unions under Dakope upazila have been under waist-deep water for the last two years, keeping 23,000 men, women and children of six thousand families homeless. "We do not know when water will recede to end our sufferings," said Nuru Molla of Maharajpur union in Koira upazila. Sufferings of the marooned people beggar description, said Abdul Mannan, chairman of Dakkhin Bedkashi union parishad.
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