Telangana: Godavari ebbs, but anger erupts at relief camps amid torrent of woes | Hyderabad News
In relie f camps, there is anger. In some places, the complaint is about food not reaching them in time or insufficient for large groups of people put up at a camp. At other places, it is about lack of enough bathrooms, toilet facilities and water.
Students of IIIT, Basara had been complaining about poor facilities on campus for months. When the authorities did not listen to them, they protested which led to the state education minister promising better management and improved facilities. But the latest food poisoning case has exposed the fact that nothing has changed since the protest. Let this be a wake-up call for the authorities. They should immediately bring in professionals to run the campus instead of asking teachers to run the administration. Also, students themselves should given more administrative responsibilities
Bhadrachalam town is surrounded by a bund which is 80 feet high and length spans 6. 5 km. The residents of Subhashnagar said their pleas over the years to extend the bund by another 300 metres could have saved them. As many as 800 people staged a demonstration in the hope that the authorities would come and listen to them but they were disappointed.
Officials and transport minister Puvvada Ajay Kumar went around relief camps in the town on Saturday. “On the first day, they gave us food and not afterwards,” a woman complained to the minister, when he went to enquire from the people about the facilities extended to them.
The people are literally in the grip of fear as they had not anticipated such a flood fury before and are worried it would get worse if the Godavari water levels rise again. “We were told that the flood water level would reach 60 feet or more. That would not have meant so much problem for us. We left all our belongings in the house which would be floating in the water because of the flood,” a woman at one of the relief camps complained.
With the water levels rising, people of Bhadrachalam town, who are in safer places, are taking their belongings to the upper floors or to their relatives’ houses.
This is not the first time that people have been shifted to relief camps. At regular intervals whenever there is a threat, they would be taken to camps and sent back home when the danger has passed. Now, the people want to go back to their houses and are also getting into arguments with government officials.
On Saturday, collector Anudeep Durishetty gave some hope to the people saying that the water levels were coming down but people in relief camps should stay where they are until further advised. He directed officials to see that proper food and water was supplied in all the relief camps.
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