DADU, Sept 16: Gender discrimination is so deeply rooted in our psyche that it even overshadows our relief and aid efforts. A visit to Dadu district’s flood-ravaged areas bears this out.

Many families which do not have adult males to look after them have not received the financial assistance announced by the government.

The distribution of Rs15,000 in compensation money for each household with completely or partially damaged houses has been completed in Sindh, but widows in Ghari Gagir village, in Mehar taluka, are both agitated and dejected at being completely ignored by the government.

Rukhsana, a widow in her 40s, almost beside herself with anger that only utter helplessness brings, discloses: “None of the widows and girls who have no fathers have received the money. Just because we have no adult male to look after us or speak for us, we have been ignored.”

In reply to a question why they did not receive the cheque like the others, Bibi, another widow, says: “We have no man to speak on our behalf. We have no one to help us.”

The villagers disclosed that the ‘agents’ who got their accounts opened in a bank in Mehar and helped them in getting the cheques, got away with anything between two and five thousand rupees for the effort. Few, if any, of the victims got the full Rs15,000 because of the middlemen involved.

According to Shaukat Nawaz Tahir, Coordinator of Sindh, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the distribution of financial relief among affected households has been completed. “When things take place in such a dimension, there is always a margin of 10 to 15 per cent error. A survey was done jointly by the army, civil organisations, district and local governments to identify the households affected. Cheques were then distributed to the people identified.

“In Balochistan, the funds were given in the form of cash while in Sindh cheques were considered more suitable for various reasons, security being one. We do realise that some people must have missed out, but we acted on the date available to us,” S. N. Tahir elaborated.

These villagers are clearly divided into haves and have-nots. Slightly over half the households have received financial compensation. And a number of them seem to have received quite a few relief goods too as was apparent from a quick survey of the settlement, just a day before Ramazan. Large tents, water coolers, household utensils and even mobile phones spoke of their relative prosperity.

Most experts believe it will take several years for the flood victims to be able to start earning again as their farms have been destroyed. It would be months before their lands are cleared of flood water and made cultivable again. And by that time most of them would run into such huge amounts of debt that even buying seeds would be difficult.