MIRPURKHAS: Several hundred flood-affected people, including women and children, mobbed assistant commissioner’s office on Friday after receiving news about distribution of relief goods and tried to force their way into the premises, which led to stampede, causing a number of women to faint.

Shujaabad taluka’s assistant commissioner Syed Asghar Ali Shah told reporters that police had to be called in to control the impatient and unruly crowd of flood victims. The women who fell unconscious in the stampede were rushed to rural health centre in Mirwah Gorchani, he said.

He lamented that a large portion of over 100,000 population of the taluka were affected by flood but he had received only 2,000 ration bags and as many mosquito nets for distribution which were far too few. The staff had given away all the bags they had and majority of the victims had to return empty-handed, he said.

He said that if he received more relief bags he would distribute them among flood-affected people without any discrimination. MITHI: A large number of displaced persons on Friday gathered at Santoro Farm bus stop in Tharparkar district and staged a demonstration on the Mithi-Mirpurkhas road to protest against officials’ indifference towards their plight.

Officials of the district administration were not providing relief items to thousands of people who were forced to leave their homes and fields after downpours and subsequent devastating cuts to the Left Bank Outfall Darin (LBOD) and other drains and irrigation canals in Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar and Badin district, said the protesters including Inayat­ullah Chandio, Imran Kumbhar, Mohammad Urs Korai, Jeeando and Moh­ammad Khan Korai while talking to local reporters.

They deplored that they were living in subhuman conditions in their so-called relief camps without required facilities, including food, drinking water, mosquito nets and medical assistance, for their ailing family members. “We are being treated like animals by the officials who make tall claims of providing the required facilities to all displaced people,” they added.

They accused the officials of nepotism and favouritism in distribution of relief goods among the displaced persons living in the relief camps and atop sandy dunes. They alleged that neither the officials were providing rations and other relief goods to them nor making concerted efforts to plug the breaches that developed in the LBOD and other drains in their respective areas.

“We are facing multiple problems after being displaced due to official neglect and want to go back home,” they said. They demanded the required facilities for all the displaced people and dewatering of the submerged villages so that the affected families could return as soon as possible. The protesters ended their demonstration after Mithi mukhtiarkar Ghulam Mus­tafa Khoso visited the venue and assured the protesters of provision of the required facilities.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2020