Assam’s second wave of floods have killed close to 40 people and rendered more than two lakh people homeless. More than 1.2 million people have been affected the ravaging floods.
The state chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, confessed that his government was struggling to provide assistance to flood victims as it didn’t have the required resources to cope with the crisis.
He asked the central government for an urgent help. While speaking to reporters, he said, “We need urgent assistance and relief materials for the flood affected people from the central government. We have exhausted all our limited resources. We are in a helpless situation.”
The Brahmaputa river, which is fed by the Himalayan snow melt, has been overflowing at many areas submerging more than 2000 low-lying villages and huge areas of agricultural land in 16 of Assam’s 23 districts which include Dhubri, Dibrugarh, Lakhimpur and Dhemaji.
The BSF personnel responsible for proving relief in the area are unable to function. All their camps have been submerged under water. They are also complaining for the lack of any help from the civil administration.
“The first problem is that our operational efficiency gets affected because there is water everywhere. We try and give the villagers here as much aid and help as possible. But, you can see for yourself, there is no civil administration available here,” said Ajai Singh, the Deputy Inspector General of BSF in Dhubri Sector was quoted as saying.
Decades of mass deforestation have led to soil erosion where sediment is washed downstream from mountainous areas. It ends up in rivers where it builds up on the river bed, raising the level of the water far higher than normal.