Rafiullah Mandokhel
Floods affectees of Kan Mehterzai area of Balochistan are waiting for government assistance for their losses more than four months after the August floods played havoc with their livelihood.
Kan Mehterzai is among coldest areas of Balochistan and located about 100 kilometers from Quetta on Zhob National Highway.
These floods affectees have lost their belonging and livelihood to the floods and now they are forced to put up with the area’s extreme cold.
The locals said that no assistance has been provided to them to rebuild their mud-brick houses in one of the coldest places of the province so far. They said that people who are waiting in hope of getting assistance to rebuild their lives were spending their days and nights in partially damaged structures and ruins. Besides, they added only some well-off people managed to rebuild their houses after the floods.
Nizamuddin, resident of Kali Suri Mehterzai told TNN that the monsoon floods played havoc with their livelihood. He said that floods destroyed his apple crop, his house and agricultural properties. In addition to this, he said that his 500 apple trees and more than 25,000 in the union councils were unable to produce any yield due to damages caused by floods and torrential rains.
He said that their village was located on the banks of a stream and wave of 25 to 30 feet high water passed through this during the floods. Nizam said that the floods washed away the mud brick homes, standing crops, protection works and uprooted decades old trees.
He said that road to their village from Kan Mehtrezai Bazaar has also broken down due to the floods and now locals were forced to use alternate routes to reach it. “It was particularly hard on women and patients to travel on this road,” he said.
Muhammad Amin Mehterzai, a resident of Asuzai Talluri village, which is located in the foothills of a mountain near the Kan Mehtrezai said that he was staying at the home at the residence of a relative after the destruction of his home due to floods.
He said that authorities neither addressed their grievances nor extended any financial assistance to them.
Amin said that their area was backward village and lacked basic amenities; however, the recent floods and rains have also taken their toll on it.
He said that only government assistance at his juncture could address the locals’ sense of deprivations.
“A girls schools next to our homes were inundated after the floods; however, months after the floods, the school was not usable,” he said. He said that village school girls were waiting for government support to continue their studies.
“An academic year of these girls has been wasted due to the destruction of school,” he said.
Kan Mehterzai is the coldest area of Balochistan and winter temperatures drop to minus 16 in winter. Besides, the area has Asia’s second highest railway station after Tibet.
Due to the elevation of the area, the locals made sturdy mud-brick houses and top with corrugated iron sheets to avoid freeing of snow on their roofs. This area is also famous for its high quality apples which are famous all over the country due to unique taste.
On the other hand, Balochistan government officials said that they were taking all possible steps to address the grievances of the flood affectees. However, the officials said that to address the affectees’ woes and compensation, they needed foreign assistance as the province was already battling the poverty.
