KARACHI: Even when thousands of people are without shelter on their heads in flood-hit areas like Sindh, Balochistan and South Punjab, but the temporary camps prepared by federal and provincial governments and NGOs are also lacking main facilities like edible water, hygiene and proper toilets which has threatened the lives of people lodged in these camps.
Millions of people have no approach to these temporary camps and governments are also inable to give exact number of people affected in flood-hit areas, which is nearly a third of the country under water.
The odour is a heady mix of rotting vegetation from drowned crops, leftover food scraps and garbage — as well as the accumulated excrement of the hundreds of people and livestock gathered there.
People are unable to find a way for going toilet to relieve themselves. The flash floos has caused diseases like gaestro, diarrhoes and sp many which needs to relieve most of the time and there is no proper places to get relieved but in open air. People ire using food bags to hide and get privacy when they go in open air.
There is no place for showering or going to the bathroom, a lady siad while talking to a female reporter, adding that they are forced to flee with her family two weeks ago when floodwater inundated her village.
Similar tent camps have mushroomed across the south and west of the country. The worst flooding in the country’s history has covered an area the size of the United Kingdom and affected 33 million people, one in seven Pakistanis.
A lack of functioning toilets at these camps is one of the biggest issues, posing a health hazard for all, but misery in particular for women and girls.
Rural Pakistan is home to extremely conservative Muslim communities, and many displaced women are having to live in close proximity to men who aren’t relatives for the first time in their lives.
“We used to live behind the veil, but God has removed that for us,” the lady from south Punjab referring to the strict segregation between the genders that is practised in rural Pakistan.
She said she was “deeply ashamed” at having to relieve herself in the open — especially after she caught a man watching her as she lowered her shalwar kameez behind a tree.
Another lady expressed similar sentiments. “Where can I send my daughters alone? When we squat to relieve ourselves, we get scared that some man might come”, she said.
Swarms of flies and mosquitoes add to the misery, creating an environment ripe for a breakout of disease and infection.
Some women have stopped venturing into the floodwater to relieve themselves after many developed rashes.
Flood-affected people shift their belongings to a safer place in Dera Allah Yar
Read more: By-polls in PP-241 Bahawalnagar: PML-N fields a first-timer
