KARACHI With the ongoing flood situation, the number of survivors currently being looked after by the city government has increased to 32,032. These survivors have been provided accommodation in 29 relief camps across the city. But the influx of the affected into the city is continuous and the city administration is trying to cater to their needs despite a lack of resources, Shahzeb Kakar, an official with the Sindh government's revenue department who is closely associated with the relief operations in Karachi, told Dawn.com.
We are arranging for their accommodation and for the provision of food and health care, Kakar said, adding that doctors and paramedical staff had been deputed in the first aid centres across all government-run relief camps in the city.
The camp in Karachi's Bin Qasim Town's Razzaqabad area is among the most sprawling settlements established to house the displaced with some 7,000 registered flood survivors.
“Of the registered 7,000, some 1,000-1,200 have moved out...the IDPs currently present in the camp are around 6,000,” Kakar said.
Thousands were housed in the Polytechnic School and in the tent city set up that comprise the Razzaqabad relief camp, a visit to the site revealed. More than 40 persons occupy each room in the school and some six to eight persons are housed inside each tent. A team of eight doctors and other paramedical staff are stationed 24 hours in three shifts at the camp. A school has also been established in the camp's premises which the children have started attending.
Most of the displaced in this particular camp are from Sindh's Jacobabad, Ghouspur, Karampur and Thul regions.
Mai Pari, from Jacobabad, and a grandmother of four, is a heart patient who will soon run out of the medicine that she managed to salvage before boarding the train for Karachi.
“I would worry about my health but there are so many other problems ...my husband is missing. He was going to leave soon after me and the children left but we have been in Karachi for 12 days and so far he has made no contact,” she said.
“My grandchildren keep getting ill with diarrhoea,” she said, adding that though there is help from the paramedics and “they do get better...but this keeps on happening.”
On the other hand, Doctor Karima Omar, a member of the medical staff working at the camp, says “simple diarrhoea cases do come up in large numbers on a daily basis”, but there are “no emergency cases as such, nothing to really worry about.”
While the survivors are being served food and water and are provided with basic medical facilities in the camp, there seems room for improvement in terms of organisation and prioritised dispensation of facilities to the displaced.
“There is a problem of organisation, yes, but the government is trying to do more than the maximum in these circumstances...we might not have the required resources to 'perfectly' manage the situation, but we are employing whatever means we can bring in,” Kakar said.
Although most flood affected families have found their way to government-regulated relief camps, facilitating their registration, hundreds are still living in near oblivion and in extreme conditions on the citys outskirts. A visit to one such settlement in Korangi Town's Bilal Colony and its adjacent area near the Malir river showed that hundreds of these survivors are living in the open air and in acute unhygienic conditions. The settlement also appeared to lack a steady supply of food and water.
“It is hard having to live like this...I don't know what will happen...some of the people here have also lost their relatives while trying to get here, to Karachi,” said Zarina, a mother of five young children, from Shikarpur.
Most of the survivors living in this settlement are from Sindhs Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Larkana regions.
Marvi, another survivor, from Sindhs Thul area and a mother of seven, travelled to Karachi in the wake of evacuation calls issued by the region's local administration. Congestedly seated with five of her children under an improvised shed, Marvi says every morning her husband Rasoolbux goes out to find work in nearby areas.
“There are days when he can find work and we can manage to get some food...sometimes food is also distributed,” Marvi told Dawn.com.
Though the government has not yet registered the survivors in this settlement, the Edhi Foundation is operating in the area and “is delivering food to them on a daily basis,” said Anwar Kazmi, the foundation's administrator.
Kakar says the Sindh government plans on adopting the settlement.
“There are 300-400 flood survivors in that settlement...we might transfer them to the camps that have already been established...but we are aware of the conditions there...there is also a problem of locals posing as flood survivors in unregulated localities...but we will devise a solution,” Kakar said.
The writer can be contacted at quratulain.siddiqui@gmail.com
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