CONFRONTING SEVERE WINTER

Quake-Hit Kashmir Cries For Help

Tapas Sinha

DYFI general secretary along with JKDYF leaders and activists distributing the relief in Uri

FROM October 14 to 18, 2005, a delegation comprising the DYFI general secretary Tapas Sinha, JKDYF president Yaqoob Ganai, joint secretary Bashir Assad, DYFI leaders from Punjab Ashanand and Kuldeep Singh along with 30 to 40 local activists visited various earthquake affected areas of Kashmir. This visit, in fact, has been an eye-opener in many aspects since the team was the first to reach in many areas (even before the government aid has arrived) and the situation at the grass-root level is shocking, to say the least.

On October 14 and 15, the delegation visited the worst hit areas of Uri where the magnitude of the devastation caused by the quake was the severest. Due to blockages on the roads, the team had to scale the hilly track to reach the affected areas in many villages like Jula, Sidwani, Sultan Takki, Adoosa, Salamabad, Kambalkot, Namragaon, Chakra Valta. Most of these villages are situated in remote hilly localities. These villages are cut off by road blocks and relief was yet to arrive in most of these places.

RELIEF NOT PROVIDED

In village Sidwani of Uri Tehsil, in all 39 families reside and 5 minor children belonging to these households in the age group of 5-10 had died in the disaster. The families are confronting the winter in the open with no help coming from the government. Panchayat member Ghulam Din, in fact, complained vigorously against the J&K government for the lack of relief operation in the area. Almost 90 per cent of the residential structures are now reduced to rubbles. Local residents confirmed that even after the 8th day of the quake, no relief was provided.

The relief operation is better in all those areas where road connectivity is not disrupted, and in those places tents, blankets and rations are provided to the people, to some extent. But the areas with no connectivity by roads are completely cut off. It was also observed that the control rooms established by the team that the infrastructure of the control rooms (established temporarily by the government to store the relief materials) is very poor and in turn this is affecting the relief operation. The people, whose residential structures survived the quake, are also unable to stay in due to continuous after shocks. The people of the affected areas, particularly those in the inaccessible regions, are assured by the DYFI representatives that they are not alone and DYFI along with JKDYF decided to launch relief operations in large scale as soon as the relief consignments reach Srinagar.

On October 16 and 17, the team visited affected areas of Handwara in Kupwara district, and distributed blankets among the affected people in Kandi, Water Khani, Rajpur, Ahgam, Tratumla, Kulangaon and Rajwara. Rajpur and and Ahgam are bordering areas with Pakistan administered Kashmir and these border areas are worst affected, in comparison to other areas in the constituency. The team planned to go to the border areas of Tangdhar as well, but due to continuous snowfall and rain those plans had to be abandoned.

In spite of losing his brother, wife and three children (who were visiting Muzzafarabad) in the quake, Md Ashraf of Kulangaon, the brother of Md Abid (JKDYF District Committee member, Kupwara) joined the team in relief work. Other than providing with relief materials and assuring the affected people, the delegation sent a fax to the chief minister immediately, to convey the hardship and pain faced by the people, urging him to provide relief as soon as possible.

GOVT RELIEF GROSSLY INADEQUATE

Though the Army and the Air Force played a good role in providing relief to people, it was observed by the team that the government relief is grossly inadequate keeping in mind the scale of the tragedy. Many of the military establishments are also affected very badly. In this scenario, the government is mostly resorting to announcing various measures rather than making concrete arrangement to reach the affected areas. Due to militancy and the resultant insecurity, the NGOs are also not as active as in any other disaster (like the tsunami). Huge landslides followed after the quake and as a result, most of these areas, particularly the border areas and the Uri sector, are inaccessible through road. Medical vans are approaching these regions, but getting stuck somewhere in between. All these are making the lives of the affected mass more miserable and painful. The insurgency problem is making the matter worse. While the relief work was on full swing on October 17, news came to the delegation that terrorists had gunned down Ghulam Nabi Gani, a prominent CPI(M) activist and kisan leader from Pahelgaon, at 2.45 PM. It was later followed by a terrorist attack on the house of J&K party secretary M Y Tarigami.

The need of the hour is to provide relief to the people on a war footing, and the government has to take major role in that because unlike in other disasters, other agencies and the NGOs will not be participating in the relief work in a large scale. Some of the NGOs tried to distribute old collected clothings, but the people of Kashmir are grudging about those old cloths. Right now the most important things which they need are big shelter tents, tin shades, blankets and woolen winter garments to survive in this winter season. Other immediate basic requirements are food, water, lanterns, candles, matchsticks. Due to the timing of the earthquake, the women and the children suffered the highest number of casualties. As mentioned earlier the medical vans are unable to reach to the worst-hit areas. The need of the hour is to provide small mobile medical teams with small medical kits, by which immediate medical support can be provided to the aggrieved people of Kashmir.

Though the DYFI team has issued a call for relief operation and has started working on it, the disaster in Kashmir is too big in magnitude, and without the help of the government it is almost impossible to provide immediate relief to most of the affected people. The people of Kashmir are expectantly looking towards the entire nation to be with them at this moment of crisis, and the entire country has to live up to the expectations of the people of Kashmir. The time has come for a big intervention in the relief work so that there are no further losses of human lives.