Assam flood displaced get a taste of UN’s conflict refugee camps

For the first time, panchayats will audit management of shelters, distribution of relief materials

August 01, 2020 08:22 pm | Updated 08:24 pm IST - LAKHIPUR (ASSAM):

Children during their class at the child-friendly space at the Baungaon Lower Primary School flood relief camp in Lakhipur circle of eastern Assam's Goalpara district.

Children during their class at the child-friendly space at the Baungaon Lower Primary School flood relief camp in Lakhipur circle of eastern Assam's Goalpara district.

Assam’s flood-displaced this year have had a taste of the kind of camps the United Nations runs for the Rohingya in Bangladesh, Kurds in Syria and other conflict refugees across the globe.

The trigger for the “redesigning” of the flood relief camps was the 2018 flash flood in eastern Assam’s Golaghat district caused by the 25MW Doyang Hydroelectric Project in Wokha district of Nagaland.

At the Baungaon Lower Primary School near Lakhipur, a circle headquarters in Goalpara district about 165 km west of Guwahati, seven-year-old Sushmita Hajong looks forward to the quirky lessons anganwadi supervisor Sajeda Begum and her team imparts through songs and dances. Sushmita is one of 63 children and 11 infants at the school, a relief camp for residents of the submerged Dhamor Reserve village nearby.

Music does not motivate 10-year-old Bibek Saha at the Nidanpur Adarsha Prathamik Vidyalaya relief camp 5 km from Baungaon a.k.a. Signboard, a name derived from a British-era signpost at a bifurcation indicating the road to Meghalaya’s Tura town. What animate him are building blocks in one of the rooms where they are allowed to be expressive.

Children and some mothers waiting for their meal.

Children and some mothers waiting for their meal.

 

“With COVID-19 in the backdrop, the floods in Assam have had a severe impact on children’s well-being and disrupted routine services for children and women. To address their specific requirements during such emergency, child-friendly spaces (CFS) were included as an integral part of the relief camp management system this year,” said Madhulika Jonathan, UNICEF’s Chief of Field Office in Assam.

UNICEF provided technical support to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) in the development of the policy guidelines for managing the CFSs. The blueprint mandated at least 7 square metres of space for each camp resident compared with 3.5 sq. m. earlier, along with sufficient toilets and sanitation facilities besides daily monitoring of health — weekly in the past — of the camp inmates.

“We carried out swab sample tests of the relief camp inmates regularly. Thankfully, none tested COVID-19 positive,” said Varnali Deka, Goalpara’s Deputy Commissioner.

M.S. Manivannan, ASDMA’s Chief Executive Officer said the CFS idea was first piloted during the 2019 floods. “The success of two camps each in Dhemaji and Lakhimpur districts made us implement CFS at all the 617 relief camps so far since May 22, when the first wave of floods struck Assam,” he added.

Public audit

According to an UNICEF field officer, the CSF idea germinated after the sudden inundation of almost 10,000 hectares in previously flood-safe areas of Golaghat district in 2018.

“ASHA (accredited social health activist) and anganwadi workers were not aware that relief camps provide an opportunity to continue their regular services. This prompted the thinking that such camps should not only be seen as distress relief centres,” he said.

The difficult part was condensing the “long-term UN model for Rohingya, Kurd and other refugee camps” for short-term flood relief camps in Assam, not implemented anywhere else in the world. “We helped the government design programmes for the flood-displaced women and children at camps with duration from two days to more than a month,” the field officer said, declining to be named.

Mr. Manivannan said the performance of the CFS and other first-time services such as mobile banking, free telemedicine consultations and free emotional counselling can only be assessed after a public audit.

“We will go for a social auditing in flood-affected areas after the water recedes to find out how the relief camps were maintained, how the relief material was distributed, etc. This will be placed before the panchayats and the public for inputs to get a better picture,” he told The Hindu .

There have been complaints about erratic relief distribution in areas such as Takimari in Goalpara district. “The government did not provide adequate tarpaulin and rice to hundreds of people forced to stay on the embankment [that protects the area from the Brahmaputra river],” said Aftabul Ambia, a Zilla Parishad member.

ASDMA officials said Takimari could be among the “1% villages” where relief “may not have reached in time”. Such issues were being addressed, they added.

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