What is the Govt’s Due Date?
9 expecting months bear no delivery
Nine months since Kashmir was hit by one of the worst floods of its history, floods victims have been going through labour-like pain but the government has failed to deliver relief to them.
Jasbir Kour, whose house was hit by floods last September, is restless like a bumble-bee.“I get sleepless whenever it rains,” said Jasbir, a resident of Jawahar Nagar.
Jasbir lives with her son Manmohan Singh and daughter-in-law Hardeep Kour is a widow of J S Rally, who had built a house in the posh Jawahar Nagar locality 35 years ago, spending his life-long earnings not realizing it was a flood-prone area.
“Last year, water stayed in our house for a month,” she said. “All our household belongings collected over three-and-a-half decades were washed away.”
Jasbir’s son Manmohan and daughter-in-law Hardeep ran a boutique in home, which too was hit by floods.
“All our sewing machines and embroidery material was damaged,” Hardeep said. “Besides us, four people earned their source of livelihood from the boutique as I had hired two tailors and two mechanics.”
The family said they received a paltry Rs 3800 from the government as relief.
“It is a mockery on part of the government as we had to spend Rs 80,000 on cleaning the house,” Hardeep said.
Her husband Manmohan is diabetic and was stuck in the attic for four days without medicine.
“The water stayed in our house for 28 days and the government failed to reach us,” Manmohan said. “An NGO from Ladakh saved my 21-year-old daughter. When I, and my wife, were rescued, bodies were floating in our compound.”
He said no one from the government had come to monitor whether their house was safe to live in or not.
In September 2014, Kashmir was hit by one of the worst-ever floods of its history leaving 300 people dead and property worth around Rs 1 trillion damaged.
After the floods, State government sent Rs 44,000 crore proposal to Government of India (GoI) for the rehabilitation of flood-affected people and traders.
However, the proposal is still pending with New Delhi.
The State government may not be too worried with the delay in the release of funds by New Delhi but the flood-affected people are.
Tariq Ahmad, a neighbour of Jasbir, owns a camping agency and is the sole bread winner of a nine-member family.
His house collapsed on September 7 and since then he is homeless.
“Our house was quite old and we knew it would cave in due to flood waters,” Tariq said. “So we stayed in our neighbour’s house wherefrom we saw it collapse in front of our eyes.”
He said his family stayed in the neighbour’s house for 15 days and then spent the three harsh months of winter in a tin shed and finally shifted to a rented accommodation.
“My shop was also hit by floods and my business hit,” Tariq said. “As the government has failed to provide proper relief to flood-hit people like me, I have to take loan to buy new stocks.”
Like Tariq, a resident of Indira Nagar area Showkat Hussain, too is bitter with the government, both the previous government led by Omar Abdullah and the incumbent government led by Mufti Muhammad Sayeed.
“I live in the cantonment area and Army did not come to my rescue,” Showkat said. “We were surrounded by water for 27days.”
He was critical of the former chief minister saying that he had visited his residence at Gupkar 18 times and begged him to rescue people in the area.
“One of the security guards of Omar Abdullah broke the limb of my friend for being at his gate over and again,” Showkat said.
Other flood-hit people like Muhammad Muzaffar were all praise for the volunteers and rescuers.
He expressed gratitude to missionary bodies of the Sikhs who had rescued him and many other people in Jawahar Nagar.
“After my house collapsed, Syed Ali Geelani provided me and others flood-hit people in this locality with Rs 10,000 each,” said Muzaffar, a retired banker who now run a shop and sells Kashmiri shawls.
Father of two girls, Muzaffar now lives on rent as he has failed to even clear the rubble of his collapsed house with the Rs 75,000 provided to him by the government as relief.
The government has set up a handful of temporary hutments for the flood-affected people and Muhammad Abdullah Mandoo is one of the lucky ones who is availing that facility.
He lives in one of the 20 temporary one-room hutments that were set up by the government at Parimpora.
Presently 19 families are living in those 20 hutments while one hutment was vacated after one of those 20 flood-affected families relocated back after building a new house.
“Until December 2 last year, we lived in tents provided by Jammu Kashmir Police at Bemina,” he said. “So far, the government only gave us Rs 2300 in the form of cheques.”
Four-year-old Tyba, whose mother had passed after giving her birth, also lives in those hutments along with her three brothers and father Altaf Ahmad Gojri, who is the only government employee among the 19 families in the neighbourhood and works as a scavenger with the Srinagar Municipal Corporation.
She stands outside her hutment and plays with other kids in the newly-formed neighbourhood not realizing that it is a temporary home for her.
Most of the people living in this neighbourhood are extremely poor and have acquired illegal power lines but almost all of them have satellite TV connections of the Dish TV, Videocon, Airtel and Taka Sky.
Besides Srinagar, the flood had also impacted other places and Sonawari was one of those areas.
Ghulam Muhammad Dar of Shahtalpora, Sonawari is one of the flood victims whose 30 kanal land of paddy was submerged in last year’s flood waters.
Father of four, Dar now struggles to feed the family.
He lost his cattle and sold off those that he was able to save as there was no grass available for them to graze.
Dar’s fate is shared by other orchardists in the area. In Gund Jehangir, most of the apple orchards had submerged in flood waters.
Gund Jehangir is one of the low-lying villages of Sonawari, which lies on the banks of Wullar Lake.
Sonwari area itself was reclaimed from the Wullar Lake.
An orchardist, Bashir Ahmad Lone said, “If we would have lost our houses, we could have recovered with sales of fruit from our orchards but we lost our orchards that are a source of our livelihood.”
He said the orchardists in the area had invested in the fruit trees for 20 years and now that they were reaping the benefits, everything was destroyed.
“We are broke and have bank loans and KCC loans,” Bashir said.
Another orchardist of the area Muhammad Ayub Dar said no one from the government had visited the area since September.
“Eighty percent orchards of the entire village are damaged,” Ayub said.
