Indian Summer Wears Down Tsunami Victims
Date: 07-Apr-05
Country: INDIA
Author: Y.P. Rajesh
By noon, the box-like temporary shelters built of wood pulp or tin sheets -- where survivors have been camped out since the giant waves struck in December -- turn into a furnace.
Most leave the shacks and spend the day sitting under trees, or in the shade of nearby buildings before returning to their quarters in the evening.
"We're already getting cooked inside. I don't know how we will go through another four months of summer," fisherman V. Govindaraju, 63, told a reporter on a recent visit to Nagapattinam, India's worst tsunami-hit district.
However, the bald, toothless man says his real concern is whether he will be at the mercy of the fierce sun next summer too.
"The government said they would build permanent houses for us within six months of the tsunami. It's three months now and they haven't even identified places for construction," he said.
It is a crucial issue that local authorities have been trying to address, so far with little success.
"All the available space in Nagapattinam town has been taken up for temporary shelters and the government does not know now where to build permanent structures," said R. Somasundaram, chairman of Avvai Village Welfare Society, a local voluntary group involved in relief and rehabilitation.
"They have to go inland, away from the sea, and the victims won't agree as their livelihood depends on the sea," he said. "It's a huge dilemma. I don't know how it will be solved."
FILTH, DISEASE
Local as well as international aid groups joined hands with the government to build thousands of temporary shelters in Nagapattinam within weeks of the Dec. 26 disaster. The government says 8,725 people are housed in 10 relief camps in the district.
Initially, most survivors were relieved to move into the shacks, considering them a place of their own after the wedding halls or schools into which they were packed after the tsunami.
But the relief was shortlived. Conditions in most camps turned out to be barely liveable at best, or squalid at worst.
At Govindaraju's camp, built by a voluntary group, most shacks have gaps in their tin or pulp roofs, allowing dew and the occasional drizzle to seep through. Frequent heavy winds threaten to blow the light structures away.
Water supply is erratic and pipes and drains leak, leaving big puddles of stagnating water near the camps for mosquitoes to breed.
Sewage from makeshift toilets overflows into a volleyball court next door, leaving a filthy odour hanging in the air.
"The temporary shelters were built very quickly and haphazardly as the government wanted to shift victims out of halls and schools fast," said Jesu Rethinam, head of SNEHA, a voluntary group working among Nagapattinam's fishermen.
"So obviously there are a lot of problems," she said.
SAFETY CONCERN
Govindaraju's camp, however, is one of the better ones.
At another camp in the nearby holy town of Velankanni, 63 families with no shacks of their own have been dumped in a large, makeshift hall with sarongs for walls.
A woman delivered her baby inside and is raising the child there, with no post-natal care.
"We thought we were lucky to survive the tsunami," said Japamalai, 54, a widow who sells rosaries in Velankanni and lost her daughter-in-law to the waves. "Now I think the ones who died were lucky. We survived to go through this hell."
Nagapattinam district administrator J. Radhakrishnan said the government had "concrete offers" from voluntary groups to construct thousands of new houses across the district.
"But space is a problem in the town," he said. "We don't want to hurry up with construction and create problems later."
Another concern is the need to strictly enforce norms that prohibit construction within 500 metres of the high-tide line -- a law that was not enforced before the tsunami and was responsible for the massive loss of lives in the tsunami.
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