National
Floods add to woes of displaced people
Friday’s floods triggered by incessant rainfalls in the district have exacerbated the plight of the hundreds of people who had been rendered homeless by mid-August floods last year.Kamal Panthi
Post-partum mothers, pregnant women, children and the elderly are hit hard as the floods inundated their poorly-built makeshift camps and destroyed tarpaulins. Almost all the huts belonging to the flood-displaced people at Rampurtappar in Gulariya-5 were destroyed by the heavy rains followed by storm on Thursday and Friday. “We spent last night soaking in the rain. We lost three family members last year and thought that it was now our turn,” said Uma Bhandari, a flood displaced.
The displaced people living in the temporary camps for the past 11 months complained that the government authorities ignored their plights despite repeated requests and treated them as if they were not the citizens of this country.
“We were displaced by the floods last year. Our situation has not improved even after 11 months. The government should relocate us to safe places immediately or declare that we are not Nepali people,” said Gopal Rana Chhetri.
Rain-fed landslides and floods devastated the Mid-Western districts of Banke, Bardiya, Surkhet, and Dang, killing at least 250 people and displacing thousands last year. Thirty-three people were killed in Bardiya alone.
Meanwhile, life gradually returned to normalcy in various districts in the Mid- and Far-West regions as water levels receded in various rivers and waterlogged areas on Saturday. The local authorities said there is no threat of floods and landslides as it stopped raining in the area. Farmers, meanwhile, are busy in their field transplanting paddy.