FLASH FLOOD-HIT SUNAMGANJ Food, job crisis forces people to move to urban areas [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

FLASH FLOOD-HIT SUNAMGANJ Food, job crisis forces people to move to urban areas

Local April 29, 2017

Farmer Kutub Uddin, along with members of his family, on Wednesday set out for Sylhet city as he had no food in his house and there was also no hope for getting any job in the locality after flash flood inundated his crops in haor.
‘We are now going towards the city. If we fail to manage a job there, we will then move to the stone quarries along Jaflong border for work there,’ Kutub told New Age at Launch Ghat of Sachna Bazar under Jamalganj upazila in Sunamganj.
Like him many others of the flash flood-hit haor areas in the district have been forced to leave their homesteads for the urban areas of the country, including Sylhet divisional city and capital city of Dhaka, in search of food and job.
Locals said that several thousand families of different upazilas, including Jamalganj, Bishwambarpur, Tahirpur, Dharmapasha, Shalla and Jagannathpur upazilas in the district, already left their homes for Sylhet, Dhaka and Chittagong in the past several days.
Farmer Nibaran Das of village Pratappur at Shalla told New Age that the standing boro crop, the only annual crop of the haor belt, in his eight acre land was damaged in the flash floods.
‘Fishes in the wetlands also died after the water became polluted by rotting half-ripen rice and paddy under the water,’ Nibaran added.
He said they had experienced floods in the past, but they did not cause such disaster as this time.
‘So, I’m forced to leave home with my three
children and wife for job. We will go to Bhairav by trawler and then to Dhaka by bus,’ Nibaran continued.
Dharmapasha upazila chairman Abdul Motalib Khan told New Age that the flash flood left no scope of work for the affected farmers while sand and stone extraction was suspended as the quarries in the locality went under water.
‘Allocation of relief materials for the flood affected people is too insufficient against the demand,’ he commented.
He said the lower middle-class farmers were facing the serious livelihood problem as they were not standing in queue to take relief, despite having no food in their house.
‘For this, many of these families are moving towards urban areas for jobs,’ the upazila chairman said.
Many of the flood-hit people of Jagannathpur upazila in the district returned home empty-handed after standing for hours in the long queue of Open Market Sale centres as the allotted food grains had been finished, local people alleged.
Jagannathpur upazila nirbahi officer Masum Billah told New Age that allocation of rice for each OMS centre was increased from Thursday to tow tonnes from one tonne to sell 5 kg to each buyer at Tk 15 per kg considering the increased number of clients.
‘The higher authorities will be requested to increase the volume of allocation further since the demand has gone up manifolds,’ the UNO said.
Mainul Haque, dealer of an OMS centre at Tahirpur upazila headquarters, told New Age that not only the limited supply of food grains but also only three sale centres for an entire upazila were quite inadequate.
‘Increasing the numbers of sale centres side-by-side the allocation of food grains is necessary to bring all affected people under the OMS coverage and to reduce their suffering,’ Mainul said.
He informed that more than 1,000 people gathered at his centre every day after the boro crop was flooded.
When contacted, Sunamganj deputy commissioner Sheikh Rafiqul Islam, however, claimed that the government grants for the flood affected people were sufficient.
‘We have planned to bring 1.5 lakh families of the district under the vulnerable group feeding programme when 2.77 lakh farmers have been affected in the early flood according to our primary assessment,’ he said.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to visit Sunamganj on Sunday and she will distribute relief among the farmers at Shalla upazila during her visit, the deputy commissioner said, adding that they would request her to increase the government support for the affected farmers.