Tearful homecoming for Pakistan flood survivors
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KHAIRPUR NATHANSHAH — Hajani Chandio broke down in tears when she came home after three months in a refugee camp following the catastrophic floods that ravaged Pakistan earlier this year.
“My house looked like a huge rubbish dump. It was littered with rubbish and the smell was unbearable. I burst into tears, how can we live here? The children begged us to leave,” said the mother of seven.
Chandio’s province of Sindh was one of the areas worst hit when monsoon rains ravaged a fifth of Pakistan in July and August, affecting 21 million people and consuming entire villages in the country’s worst natural disaster.
Large areas are still submerged under flood waters but UN refugee agency the UNHCR says Pakistani families are increasingly swapping life in the camps to go home, however bleak the conditions as winter sets in.
For Chandio, the loss is all the more bitter because local residents suspect their town of Khairpur Nathanshah, 350 kilometers (220 miles) from Karachi, was flooded deliberately by local authorities who breached a canal to avoid even more extensive damage elsewhere..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101217com6.html
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