PATNA: More than 10,000 flood victims rushed back to their homes from state-run relief camps as water receded from nearly 250 villages more than three weeks after a monsoon-swollen river flooded northern India’s vast plains, officials said yesterday.
The villagers, eager to return to their houses, ignored official advice to stay longer at the relief camps, where free food and health care are available, said state disaster management official Prataya Amrit. Authorities began spraying insecticide to kill mosquitoes in the villages, Amrit said. The villagers set out for their homes from the relief camps on Thursday.
Floodwater has drained out of nearly 250 villages, Amrit said, adding that 750 other villages were still under up to four feet of water in the five worst-hit districts of Bihar state. Authorities have set up 189 health centers and 1,640 toilets for more than 300,000 flood victims living in 326 state-run relief camps, he said.
Diarrhea is the most common complaint among the flood victims in the relief camps, but doctors have been able to prevent any epidemics through immunization drives, said Deepak Kumar, the state health secretary. “Availability of medicines is not an issue,” Amrit said.
More than 1.2 million people were driven from their homes by the flooding and have been living in relief camps or with friends or relatives, Amrit said.
Authorities have confirmed 42 deaths, but it is widely believed the final toll from the floods will be much higher. On Aug. 18, the Kosi River, a Ganges tributary that flows from Nepal to India, burst its banks on the Nepali side of the border and flowed into a channel it had abandoned a century earlier.
The water flooded more than 1,000 villages in India’s Bihar state and 370,650 acres of farmland, Amrit said. The relief camps will remain open for another six months because it will take that long to repair damaged embankments, homes, highways and village roads, the state’s top elected official, Nitish Kumar, said earlier this week.
Authorities also said they would rebuild the homes of flood victims and feed them better in camps. But at least 300 villagers yesterday blocked roads and shouted slogans demanding better food in Madhepura district of the flood-hit eastern state of Bihar, witnesses.
