Villagers row into their marooned village on a country boat in Kendrapada. (AP)

Jajpur/Kendrapara, Oct. 1: Narayan Chandra Behera, a government employee, got stuck on his way home from Koraput at Sujanpur in Bari block, one of the worst flood-hit areas in Jajpur district.

He could not move further because the road leading up to Bari remained submerged under eight to 10ft water. He tried to procure a country boat to negotiate the flooded stretch but in vain. After a fruitless wait of six hours, he was forced to return to the house of a relative in Cuttack.

Country boats are now seldom found in Jajpur where these once used to be the sole means of communication during floods. People in the rural areas used to keep boats ready as flash floods were an annual feature in areas such as Bari, Dasarathapur, Binjharpur, Barachana and Dharmasala.

“In our village almost everybody had a boat. These used to save us during floods,” said Rabindra Mohanty, a septuagenarian of Gamu village in Bari block. However, with floods becoming less endemic and their severity getting reduced towards the end of the 80’s, the boat-making industry suffered a jolt. Boats were no longer as necessary as they used to be in the past.

The owners dismantled most of these vessels made of sal or Burma teak. “These days, there are few country boats as people have either sold or dismantled the vessels,” said Naba Kishore Majhi, a boatman. The hiring charges, too, have shot up from Rs 400 or Rs 500 to Rs 1,200 or Rs 1,500.

Today, when boats are scarce people are feeling the pinch. “When there was no flood for several years in the Brahmani river, we thought the menace had gone for good. We started dismantling the boats. Some of us even sold those of. Now, we realise that we committed a mistake,” said septuagenarian Hrusikesh Jena of Arangabad village.

In Kendrapara, the administration faced boat crisis as the owners, who had not been paid their arrears since the last floods, refused to lend their vessels for relief and rescue operation. Instead they used their boats for fishing.

“The boat owners have been treated shabbily in the past. There are instances of boat owners not being paid their dues in the past. They were reluctant to lend their boats this time,” said Narayan Haldar, chief of a marine fishermen’s union.

“For the last two years, majority of boat owners have been running from pillar to post to get their dues. During 2006 and 2008 floods, the government engaged our vessels for relief and rescue work, but it forgot to pay us,” said Haripada Manna, an office-bearer of private boat owners’ association, adding that the boat owners were forced to resort to non-cooperation with the government.

The boatmen dispatched a sizeable number of high-speed boats for deep-sea fishing to escape forcible seizure of the vessels by the marine fisheries department. “Boats earn us our bread and butter. Last time, the officials did not pay us. The money sanctioned as boat-hiring charges was misused,” said Nimai Mandal, a boat owner of Mahakalpada.

The administration, on the other hand, claimed that 180 country boats and 121 mechanised fishing vessels were on the rescue and relief mission this time.