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Too poor to fight recurring floods

Thousands still without food, shelter in rural Sunamganj

PlNAKI ROY back from Sunamganj
A famine-like situation prevails in Sunamganj as after-effects of recurring floods that have wiped out the
staple crop of the region continue to plague the locals.
Floods, which submerged the entire area thrice in a single year, have rendered a very large number of people jobless across rural Sunamganj. For food, they mostly depend on fishing in the vast water bodies around.
"It's true people here don’t have sufficient food but no one died from starvation yet. The government has provided vulnerable group feeding cards for nearly 45 percent of the families," said Jafar Ahamed Siddique, deputy commissioner of Sunamganj.
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Out of four lakh families in Sunamganj, around 50,000 have lost houses and many could not yet set about rebuilding, the district administration sources said. In some villages, poor farmers and day labourers have been living under polythene-roofed shanties, as they can not afford to use corrugated tins.
"I’ve lost all my belongings in floods. The Red Crescent provided the polythene you see on the roof. Now, I'm waiting for the government to provide me with tins to rebuild my house," said Montu Chandra Biswas, one of many homeless people in Sunamganj.
He along with seven other family members lives in a small makeshift dwelling. He requested this correspondent to list his name so that he could get some tins to rebuild the house.
The deputy commissioner of the
district said house building assistance is not enough. The government so far has allocated only 950 bundles of tin.
Chairman of the Mohonpur union, Anjob Ali said people would have died had the government not provided the VGF cards.
. As many as 1900 VGF cards were distributed among 40,000 people in Mohonpur union. They got 30 kilogram rice against a card.
Many of the local farmers have ended up being rickshaw-pullers after the floods. Some farmers, who used to have from 200 to 250 maunds of rice a year, are now pullingrickshaws in the district town.
"Farming was the only source of income for me. In the aftermath of flooding that had damaged all my harvest. I don’t find anything but pulling rickshaw to earn my living,” said Shafikul Islam of Kallkandi village of Sadar upazila.