By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net
As a humanitarian gesture to the flood affected people in Bihar, the South India-based Popular Front of India (PFI) sent a relief team consisting of five members which distributed relief material worth Rs14 lakh in the flood hit region from 18- 24 September 2008.
TwoCircles.net talked to leader of the relief team Yasir Hasan who is also Executive Council member of Popular Front of India.
He pointed out that initially he along with one other member surveyed the flood affected areas for two days in order to get an idea of what are the things that the affected people need most. They made a list of the required things.
They found that there was food being distributed in the relief camps. But people needed clothes urgently because it was nearly impossible for them to take more clothes in the panic and crisis of the time when they somehow fled to save their lives. And the situation was that people, particularly women, had been in the same clothes since more than 20 days.
There was no food for children like milk or biscuits. Then flood affected region was also the breeding ground of mosquitoes.
So the relief team, which remained in the region from 18 to 24 September, took clothes, baby food like biscuits and milk powder, mosquito coil, buckets, washing and toilet soaps with it.
Yasir Hasan pointed out that they had certain financial limitations so they targeted the 7 relief camps of Araria out of which six were in the Araria town and one was near Nepal border in a place called Jogubani. The camps they covered had around 6000 people.
He informed that the team had clothes for every one from newly born children to old aged.
They also distributed blankets and bed sheets in the camps because winter may approach the region in October.
The team also distributed gram, and dates to be used by the Muslims for their iftar and sehri.
All inmates in the camps in the Araria town like the ones at Millia College, Sir Syed Town Hall, Subhash Stadium, Madrasa Rahmania, Azad Academy School and Salfia Madrasa benefited from the relief material.
Popular Front team has also provided clothes and food kits to the relief camp at Jogubani Madrasa Mahmudia situated near Nepal boarder.
At one place people had difficulties in getting drinking water so it bored two hand pumps there.
Hasan informed TCN about places like Muharampur and Bagheli – all 19 panchayats are still under two feet water. Surprisingly no government agency or any NGO has yet covered the area which is in the urgent need of all relief materials.
PFI relief team was the first to visit them. People here had no food there to survive on informed Mr. Hasan
The PFI relief team distributed food packets and other relief material in these villages also.
He said that the said area is a bit interior so it is a bit difficult to reach there, but any how the team visited the area and distributed whatever they had.
They need medical teams also because soon there is going to be outbreak of epidemics. To cite an example he said that one young boy died of cholera in the region because of the lack of medical facilities on time. The PNF team bought some medicines and sent it to the area at the time of its departure from the area.
The PFI formed in 2006 is an umbrella body of Kerala’s National Development Front (NDF), Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD) and Tamil Nadu’s Manitha Neethi Pasaria (MNP).
[Photos by PFI]