Guwahati: Calling the third round of flooding this year in Assam ‘the worst’ for parts of the state, ‘Save the Children’ today said around 1.8 million children (many of them twice over) along with their families had been affected over the past three months and struggled daily to meet their basic needs.
‘The third wave of flooding in Assam has affected children the most. It has dealt a severe blow to the people, compromised their resilience and has also adversely affected the relief and rehabilitation efforts made by humanitarian agencies such as Save the Children,’ said Thomas Chandy, CEO, Save the Children, India, on his visit to Assam.
The first round of flooding affected the districts of Barpeta, Nalbari, Morigaon, Jorhat, Tinsukia and Golaghat on June 25-26. By July 3, around 2.7 million people in 27 districts had been affected.
In the September round of flooding, the third wave this year, around 1.5 million people were affected.
‘The total population affected was 4.89 million – out of which 1.8 million were children,’ said Mr Chandy.
He said Save the Children response to the crisis included food grain support, safe drinking water, setting of child-friendly spaces where playing and learning takes place in a safe environment, cash assistance to families facing extreme financial hardship, tarpaulins for shelter, hygiene kits, medical support through trained medical practitioners, among other things.
‘Save the Children plans to reach out to around 35,000 children in 10,200 households in the districts of Barpeta, Nalbari and Morigaon in Lower Assam. We have recently started work in Tinsukia in Upper Assam as well,’ Mr Chandy added.
He also said the ethnic conflict in Assam was an extremely unfortunate development at a time when the people were already under the impact of the floods.
‘The displacement of 400,000 people and their families led to a number of problems for themselves, as well as disruption of schooling in places where they took shelter. Also, for humanitarian agencies, some of the areas became difficult to reach due to the conflict. When our access was blocked, we felt helpless but the moment we could, we reached out to the children and their families again,’ he said.
Save the Children’s National Manager for Emergencies Ray Kancharla said Save the Children and its partners were on the ground in Assam immediately after the flooding began, and carried out assessments in areas that were difficult to reach.
‘We found that the children lacked access to clean water, did not get adequate nutrition and their health and nutritional status was deteriorating with diarrhoea and other ailments on the rise.” he said. He added that government services reached the people but not adequately at times. (UNI)
