LANDSLIDES Affected people worried about future [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

LANDSLIDES Affected people worried about future

Local June 18, 2017

Landslide-affected people in Rangamati, living at shelters or their relatives’ houses losing their homes, expressed on Saturday worries about their future.
They said that landslides destroyed almost all of their belongings along with their homes and nothing would be recovered as they went under several feet of mud.
Many affected people said that they were in huge debt and now they could see no way to pay back the loans and feared that they would need new loans.
Although the district administration was yet to prepare a complete list of the destroyed homes and affected people, local people said that over 1,000 houses in the hill district town and elsewhere were destroyed.
The death toll from the landslides in the hill district rose to 112 as two more bodies were found in Dumdumia area of Juraichari upazila Saturday morning, said on-duty executive magistrate Khondaker Mohammed Iktyer Uddin Arafat.
The deceased were Chibe Choga Chakma, 17, and Chiyon Chakma, 18, of Dumdumia area, he said.
The combined death toll from the landslides in three hill districts, Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar in June 12-14 increased to 158.
Over 2,100 people were now at 19 shelters in Rangamati district town and the administration was arranging their food and water free of cost, officials said.
‘Now I am getting only food and water at the shelter and I could save nothing from my house. I have nothing in my hand and it will not be possible to build any house at the place where my house was,’ said Kiron Chakma of Vidyanagar area of the town who was living at shelter at Roads and Highways Colony.
He said that all the houses of the 23 ethnic minority families on a hill were destroyed and mostly went under several feet of mud.
‘None of us has any more land and where would we go?’ he sighed.
‘My house is fully damaged in landslide. We built the house just this year taking a loan of Tk 2 lakh from an NGO [non-governmental organisation]. We still have not paid back the loan,’ said Rekha Chakma, at Udandiadam in the town while tears rolled down her cheek.
She and her family took shelter at her relative’s house near their affected house.
‘We have heard that the government would provide affected people with corrugated iron sheets to build house. But how would we be able to manage money to build a house and buy utensils and clothes as most of us could save nothing of our belongings,’ said Amena Bewa of Natunpara area, who along with her husband and two minor sons took shelter at Bangladesh Open University office.
‘We don’t know how long the administration would run the shelters,’ she said.
Rangamati deputy commissioner Manjarul Mannan said that they would operate the shelters as long as the affected people needed.
The government would take programmes to rehabilitate the affected people, said state minister for Chittagong Hill Tracts affairs Bir Bahadur Ushwe Singh.
People were found living on slops and foots of risky hills in different areas, including Shimultali, Muslim Para, Udamdi, Rangapani, Reserve Bazaar, Tabalchhari Swarnatila and Juba Unnayan Area, on Saturday.
District administration officials said that the road communications between Rangamati and other parts of the country could not be restored until Saturday night.
They said that the engineering core of Bangladesh Army was working to restore the traffic movements on Rangamati-Chittagong, Rangamati-Khagrachari, Rangamati-Baraichhari and Rangamati-Kaptai roads.
They said that daily commodities and other necessary goods were being brought from Chittagong to Kaptai by road and then Kaptai to Rangamati by waterway.