The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) on Sunday alleged the state government had failed to provide adequate relief materials to the flood-affected people.
“The state government has failed to provide adequate food items, drinking water, baby food, fodder and arrange medical facilities for the flood-affected people. This is a result of lack of sincerity and prior planning of the government,” the union said in a statement.
The allegation came on a day five more persons — two in Morigaon and one each in Dhemaji, Goalpara and Kamrup — died taking the death toll in this year’s floods to 65.
Altogether 1.15 lakh people are reported to be sheltered in 658 relief camps in different districts, the highest being in Dhubri followed by Goalpara and Morigaon.
Floodwaters have started receding but reports of rescue of people by teams, breach of embankments, roads, bridge and culvert continue to pour in from different parts of the state.
The Assam State Disaster Management Authority has said that six districts — Lakhimpur, Sonitpur, Karbi Anglong, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia and Karimganj — become free from floods in the past 24 hours.
Around 38 lakh people in 18 districts were affected by floods on Sunday in addition to 1.35 lakh hectares of cropland.
On Sunday, the Brahmaputra was flowing above the danger level at Neematighat (Jorhat) and Dhubri, the Jia Bharali at NT Road crossing (Sonitpur) and the Kopili at Dharamtul.
There are reports of birth of a child at a relief camp in a lower Assam’s Dhubri district, with his parents christening him Baan Ali. Baan in Assamese means flood.
Moved by the havoc wreaked by floods, litterateur Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi from Arunachal Pradesh, who writes in Assamese, contributed Rs 1 lakh to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. Thongchi had received the amount when he was conferred the Bodousa Samannay Award presented by the Moran Students’ Union in May this year.
Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal said Thongchi’s humility and concern for the people of Assam was an inspiration to society.
Dhubri MP Badruddin Ajmal, through his NGO, Markaz-Ul-Maa-Aarif, distributed relief items to flood-affected people in East Goalpara on Sunday. The HAMM Hospital at Hojai in Nagaon district and Al-Salam Hospital in Goalpara town, both owned by Ajmal’s family, will offer free health treatment to flood-affected people on Wednesday.
Drowned: Altaf Hussain, 32, on Saturday accidentally slipped from a bamboo bridge over the Deoshila Moranodi river at Dhanbori in Goalpara district. His body was fished out by an SDRF team.
- Additional reporting by Sofikul Ahmed in Goalpara