By IANS
Dhaka : The Bangladesh government has said it needs a week’s time to clear the confusion over differing assessments of the death toll due to Cyclone Sidr even as some international aid agencies and NGOs estimated that the toll could be as high as 20,000.
The official figure so far is 3,300. Last week, the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society was the first NGO to place the human casualty figure at around 10,000.
The government is taking stock of the number of those missing, with many swept away by the cyclone and the rising waves. Relief agencies said at many places that they had given up the search even as families were looking for their missing kin, The Daily Star newspaper reported Wednesday.
This being the fishing season, the assessment of a large migrant population on the coast and on the offshore islands is very difficult. A clear picture may not emerge for several weeks. Foreign governments and international agencies that go by official and unofficial assessments, nevertheless, rushed their aid as in the past.
A victim of over 80 cyclones in the last 130 years and other calamities like famines, floods and landslides, Bangladesh has in recent years set up an elaborate early warning system and a network of cyclone shelters along the coast of the Bay of Bengal.
The early warning system and shelters along with a better communication system bolstered by mobile telephones have helped bring down the casualties, media reports said.
Bangladesh has 25 million cell phone users.
Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed told the nation on TV and radio Tuesday that although the cyclone was more severe than the one in 1991, the death toll had been low and the disaster management had worked.
Locals and NGO officials appreciated the effectiveness of the government’s preparations for disaster management and evacuation programme, which they said kept the death toll well below those in 1991 and 1970. Over 600,000 people had died in those two cyclones.