PESHAWAR, Aug 5: Thou-sands who survived Monday’s flash floods in the city were seen trying to retrieve goods from the inundated houses on Tuesday with almost no government help in sight.

No government machinery was available in the worst-affected areas of Gula Khan Kali, Khushal Bagh, Shagai Hindkyan, Nasir Bagh, Regi and Charsadda Road to remove the debris or rehabilitate damaged water supply lines, the flood victims told Dawn. No official estimates about displaced people and destroyed houses are available as yet.

The post-flood situation aggravated owing to the absence of a disaster management plan, and the affected people were getting hopeless to receive any relief assistance or compensation for the damages from the government.

Unprecedented flash floods in the Budhni Nullah inundated vast areas, swallowing homes along its banks and destroying crops. Kutcha houses in the flood-hit localities continued to collapse, rendering more people homeless.

The Army Medical Corps and the health department have set up small camps in some localities to provide first aid and vaccines to the people to protect them against contagious diseases. Thousands of survivors are in the immediate need of tents, blankets and safe drinking water.

In the Gula Khan locality along the Budhni Nallah, more than 30 houses both kutcha and pukka have collapsed. A portion of a bridge has also caved in the area.

The survivors complained that army rescue teams and helicopters reached when water had subsided. They said local populations could have shifted their household items had they received early warning. They said the flood had hit the area at about 10am and rescue teams and choppers reached at around 3pm.

Arshad Khan, a survivor, said the gushing water had washed away his house and he had no means or resources to rebuild his abode again. Like others, he also had to shift his family to his relatives’ house.

“I don’t believe the government will provide relief or assistance to the affected people. Nobody expects compensation for the damages either. The politicians are just doing lip-service and no real rescue work has been initiated,” he lamented.

Residents of Gula Khan and other localities blamed Peshawar district Nazim Ghulam Ali for the devastation, saying he had purchased lands along the banks of the Budhni Nullah and had also encroached upon the bed of the Nullah and erected huge embankments to grab more land.

A senior official in the irrigation department also blamed the nazim for the encroachments along the Nullah. He said the provincial relief commissioner had issued notices to the authorities concerned in May last to remove the encroachments, but no action was taken.

Eight to 10 districts had been declared disaster-prone in the NWFP, but successive governments did not chalk out an effective disaster management policy.

Meanwhile, flood-affected people have refused to stay in tents and called upon the government to extend them financial assistance for meeting immediate requirements.

The City District Government of Peshawar has also appealed to the federal government for announcing a comprehensive package for rehabilitation of the affected people.

People in different localities of the affected areas like Muslimabad, Ramkush, Khurasan, Shagai Hind, Gulshanabad, Char Pareza and Choli Bala told Dawn that they could not reside in the tents and had shifted their families to relatives’ houses.

An official of the health department said many families had been shifted to a local school, but due to non-availability of official support they had moved back to their localities in a bid to retrieve their household items from the mud.

A Pakhtunkhwa Awami Party leader, Azim Gul, said the floods had affected the entire Khurasan camp, but the people were yet to get proper official support.

Some elders of the Ramkush village, including Ahmed Gul, Khan Mohammad, Nawab, Bacha Gul and Siddique, said they had lost everything.

“We are poor and cannot hire houses in residential colonies,” they said and added that they wanted financial support to hire houses and rebuild their own houses. They opposed the idea of tented villages, saying the government should immediately provide them with items of basic needs and shift the people to residential colonies, instead of keeping them in tents.

An official of the Army Medical Corps told Dawn at Shagai Hind that some spots had been identified for setting up shelter camps. Establishment of camps at Char Pareza, Shagai Hinda, Choli Bala and other parts of the Regi area was necessary because a majority of houses in the region had been washed away, he said.

Peshawar Nazim Ghulam Ali said a camp had been arranged in the Government High School-I on the Grand Trunk Road, but no family was ready to reside in the camps and everyone was asking for financial assistance to rebuild their houses.

About the destruction, he said 700 houses had been washed away and as many partially damaged. The basic requirement of a single family for rehabilitation was at least Rs200,000 he said.

“We have so far arranged 500 tents and as many blankets for the affected people, but these are not sufficient,” he said.