A woman sits on a raised platform in front of her flooded house at Uttar Bhakuria in Malda’s Harishchandrapur. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, Sept. 2: Rokea Bewa of Dakshin Bhakuria village in Malda’s Harishchandrapur and her children have been surviving on one meal a day for the past six weeks. The widow used to work as a day labourer to take care of her two sons and two daughters, but now the floods in the district have left them homeless.

“The gram panchayat has given us 5kg of rice and 1.5kg of flattened rice since the flood began,” Rokea said at Bhakuria High School where 13 families have taken shelter after their homes were inundated. “We cannot afford more than one meal a day.”

Janaki Mondol of the same village said all of them had been forced to abandon their houses and livestock when they came looking for shelter. “My husband works in Delhi. I and the others have been forced out of our homes and the administration has done nothing to allay our suffering,” she said.

The villages in the area, 90km from Malda by road, have been flooded thrice in the past six weeks by the Phulahar river and relief has been inadequate and infrequent, alleged the residents. “We are forced to eat corn flour, which we had salvaged when we left home,” said Janaki.

However, with the rains abating in the past three days, hopes are on the rise. But the Phulahar is still flowing 18cm above the extreme danger level, mainly because of the Kosi river which has flooded vast areas of adjacent Bihar.

Gita Mondol, the Congress pradhan of the Islampur gram panchayat, which is located within the flood-hit area, said waterborne diseases and fever were stalking the flood victims. “There is an immediate need for medical teams in the area,” she said.

The Forward Bloc MLA from the area, Tajmul Hossain, said people were living on makeshift machans, or platforms, above the flood waters. “All the tubewells are under water and the people are completely surrounded by filth. The district administration has no idea how thousands of people are having to survive,” he said.

District magistrate Chittaranjan Das said rice and flattened rice would be supplied to the flood-affected areas on a regular basis till the waters receded completely. “The Bengal finance minister, Asim Dasgupta, is in constant touch with us,” he said.

Das held a meeting with senior officials and political representatives this evening. “The floods have affected four blocks: Ratua I, Harishchandrapur II, Kaliachak III and Manikchak,” he said.