Seven hundred and fifty thousand souls on the move
Malik Tehseen Raza
Scenes reminiscent of 1947 started playing themselves out after the
announcement threw the populace into an unknown fear.
The announcement from mosques at 4.00am left speechless 400,000
residents of Muzaffargarh city, and the nearly 350,000 people who had
taken refuge here
|
A soldier signals towards flood victims from an Army helicopter
as they prepare to be evacuated from the Muzaffargarh district
of Punjab province on August 9, 2010. Reuters |
after furious rivers had ripped homes from their foundations in small
towns and villages nearby.
Soon the people started leaving for Multan, the only link intact
after the closures of roads leading to Layyah and Dera Ghazi Khan.
There were not enough vehicles for such a massive exodus.
The Multan-Muzaffargarh road soon clogged with all sorts of
conveyances ranging from buses and trucks to horse - and donkey - driven
contraptions. And predictably enough, transporters felt no qualms about
cashing in on the helplessness of the multitude.
Long queues of vehicles were seen at CNG stations because the closure
of Parco had caused a severe shortage of petrol and diesel.
Saleem Qureshi, who was in charge of a relief camp at Workers Welfare
School, said over 8,000 people had taken shelter in the camp over the
past two days after waters surged into Kot Addu, Sanwan, Gurmani and
Qasba Gujrat.
Around 3,500 people had refused to leave the camp as most of them
were penniless by now. Some of them said they would prefer to shelter on
roofs, and even trees, rather than risk another displacement.
One distressed person, Ghulam Abbas from Kot Addu, said “we would
prefer to die because we simply cannot afford another displacement”.
“When floods hit Kot Addu on August 2, we moved to Sanawan. After 24
hours we had to leave that town.
The Dawn |
