Shawdesh Desk: The state minister for disaster management and relief Enamur Rahman on Sunday said that flood victims did not want relief, they wanted more elaborate programmes such as building embankments and training rivers for preventing floods.
The comment came amid growing concerns over poor relief supplies leaving hundreds of thousands of people half-fed or unfed in the flood affected 28 districts.
‘Flood victims do not want relief,’ said Enam at a press briefing held at disaster management and relief ministry to inform journalists about the latest flood situation.
He said that he had travelled all the flood affected districts and the flood victims requested the government to build more embankments and train rivers to protect them from frequent floods.
The minister said that till July 27 the government allocated 27,350 tonnes of rice, Tk 4.72 crore, 3,900 bundles of CIS sheet and 1.13 lakh cartoons of dry food for the flood affected people.
He said that the government also allocated Tk 1.17 crore for repairing houses and spent Tk 18 lakh for purchasing baby foods and Tk 24 lakh for fodder.
According to the ministry, nearly 6 million people are now marooned in the flood affected districts across Bangladesh.
When asked about the sufficiency of relief allocation, disaster management and relief secretary Shah Kamal said that only poor, leaving below the poverty level, qualified for relief.
‘Relief supplies are enough as only 22 per cent people in Bangladesh leave below the poverty line,’ said Kamal.
Ministry officials said that flood situation in the country would hopefully improve in the next 48 hours and there was no chance of the situation getting deteriorated in the next two weeks.