Stink rules at relief camps in Assam

Authorities in the violence-hit areas have extended the summer holiday for educational institutions by a week because most state-run schools and colleges have been converted into relief camps. Rahul Karmakar reports.

The government high school at Salmara in western Assam’s Bongaigaon district has two toilets, perhaps adequate for its 350 students.

July is summer vacation time in Assam. But the school is open this year for nearly 5,000 Bengali Muslims who have fled their homes in violence-hit Bodoland Territorial Council area.

The toilets could not handle the pressure, forcing the inmates of the relief camp to defecate in the open all around.

According to reports, a similarly squalid scenario is unfolding in the 269 other relief camps across four districts.

The filth and stench at the Salmara camp are an assault on the senses. But if things aren't unbearable yet — as Inayat Ali from Narayanpur village said — it is because the inmates haven't had much to eat. “The quantity of rice, dal and salt we get once in four days isn’t enough to sustain us for a day,” he said.

The stronger men and women take turns to collect firewood from the neighbourhood and cook bland khichdi in community kitchens amid unhygienic conditions. Children, pregnant women and the elderly are given preference, but several scoops less than they normally eat.

Drinking water too is in short supply. Bathing and washing clothes are luxuries. Health issues too have been dogging the inmates, most of whom have no bed nets to keep mosquitoes at bay. At least 20 women have given birth at the camp’s “delivery wards” screened with filthy, patched-up saris or bed sheets. There are reports of at least five newborns having died.

Though New Delhi has rushed medical teams to Assam, inmates said doctors and nurses from local health centres had not been regular.

A state government doctor at the camp said, “We are doing everything possible with the resources at hand.”

State health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said doctors and nurses in the riot-affected areas have been told not to go on leave.Authorities in the violence-hit areas have extended the summer holiday for educational institutions by a week because most state-run schools and colleges have been converted into relief camps.