By TCN News
Purnea (Bihar): Responding to one of the worst floods in over three decades in Bihar, Hyderabad-based Sahayata Trust has initiated an immediate relief work, providing ration and ready to eat meals to the poor and needy flood affected families.
The relief is being provided in the worst flood affected districts of northern Bihar viz. Ararya, Kishanganj, Purnea, Kathiar.
On Wednesday, food packets were distributed among 600 flood affected poor and needy families in 20 villages of Purnea district.
The villages where relief was distributed are Chilhana, Gostara, Jairampur, Kawatola, Baliharpur, Tatlia, Barihaspur, Behlkha, Bhelkhaon, Plankoff, Charlua, Khagjana, Titiha, Mirchantola, Gudihar, Majgama, Chandel, Saharia, Durgiwari, Mangalpur.
Every food packet includes 10 kg rice, 5 kg puffed rice, 2 kg chickpeas, 1 kg pulse, biscuits, 1-liter mustard oil, 1 kg sugar, 500 gm gram flour, 1 kg salt.
Initially, 3,000 families are being covered under the immediate relief extended by Sahayata Trust.
Khalil Ahmed, 65, from Mohiudinpur in Kishanganj district was not able to mutter a single word for days after witnessing the floods. He and his three sons are homeless after floods swept away their mud house not leaving a single trace behind as if the house never existed.
“Every year we used to have floods. This year also we thought, there will be such low-intensity floods, but this time it broke records of previous years. It was like Tsunami.,” he said.
“The house was my blood and sweat. I toiled hard as a labourer to build the house. I wish that we should have also died in the floods,” he added.
“It’s crisis like situation in the flood affected districts of northern Bihar importantly the four districts, where we are providing food packets. The villages are cut off from the nearby towns as the roads have washed away and the people don’t have any ration left,” said Sabir Ahmed, Sahayata volunteer from Kishanganj, Bihar.
Syed Abdul Najeeb from Sahayata Trust, who reached the flood affected districts of Bihar to supervise and coordinate the relief work with a local team of volunteers, said “We have been camping on the ground since August 18th.We surveyed four districts and went in the interior villages where people have lost everything. Their houses have washed in the floods and crops are totally damaged. They are surviving by eating fish, which were washed off shore by floods and are very harmful for them.”
“Today we reached 600 families across 20 villages and tomorrow we will provide food packets to flood victims in 18 villages of Kishanganj district,” he added.
The flood water entered most of the villages in Bihar on the intervening night of August 11 and 12 as well as on August 13th, when the rivers swelled due to continuous rains. The affected districts are Purnea, Kishanganj, Katihar, Araria, Madhepura, Supaul, East Champaran, West Champaran, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Sitamarhi, Sheohar, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Sahrasa & Khagaria.
The death toll has risen to 300, affecting 13 million people across 18 districts in the state.
Importantly, North Bihar is one of India’s most flood-prone region, where recurring floods have brought devastation repeatedly. According to locals, the kind of the flood they witnessed now matched the unprecedented flooding of 1987.