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WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE: Flood-hit villagers (above) waiting to receive food at Garakhpur district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday while a boy receives bread outside Dhaka in Bangladesh. More than 20 million people left homeless by floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal face food shortages and threat of epidemics, say aid agencies. -- PHOTOS: AP
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NEW DELHI - RELIEF workers continued to struggle to help the millions hit by the recent wave of floods in India, even as officials said the worst was over and efforts would now be scaled back.
Reflecting the grim situation in some areas, one man died and 12 others were injured when police beat back a crowd of hungry flood victims at a relief centre in Bihar, India's worst-hit state.
Elsewhere, angry residents in a village beat up a government official, claiming some of the aid promised to them had disappeared.
On Friday, at least 30 people were injured in Bihar during clashes with police officers while demanding food and clothes.
Officials, however, claimed the situation had eased, with flood waters receding, and most land and rail routes with marooned villagers had been reopened.
'The government sees that the situation has eased considerably,' said Mr Manoj Shrivastav, the disaster management secretary in Bihar.
Roads had already been cleared in Assam and Uttar Pradesh, two other Indian states badly hit by the floods.
Hundreds of thousands of people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal however continue to live in makeshift camps after their villages were ravaged by the floods.
According to aid agencies, more than 20 million people left homeless are facing a food shortage and threat of epidemics.
'In Nepal, almost 400,000 are in dire need of food. Nutrition is not reaching the elderly and pregnant women. The public health system in South Asia is in a shambles,' Mr P.V. Unnikrishnan, the South Asia coordinator for ActionAid International, a non-governmental organisation, told Bloomberg.
And doctors are struggling to cope with the aftermath as disease spreads.
Paramedics visiting villages in Uttar Pradesh in India 'don't have adequate supplies of medicines', said Mr Ramakant Rai, chief of the state's Voluntary Health Association.
India's Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi said 20 states across the country had been battered by the floods.
He said: 'Over 1,500 people have lost their lives and the floods have caused vast damage to crops and cattle. The Prime Minister has called for a detailed report which will come up for full discussion at the next Cabinet meeting.'
Air force helicopters had earlier been flying sorties to get aid to marooned flood victims.
Dr N. Saravana Kumar, chief administrator of Samastipur district, one of the worst-hit in Bihar, told The Straits Times that the air force had been directed to carry out 'targeted dropping' of food packets to ensure that they reached those who had not received any relief assistance so far.
The government had also deployed 491 private boats to distribute food to the affected people while four army boats were taking medical teams to inaccessible areas.
Dr Kumar said the victims had been provided with 23kg of rice and 200 rupees (S$7.50) each to meet their immediate requirements. They will be given a further 2,000-rupee allowance for resettlement once the flood waters had receded from the villages.
But he admitted that despite the state government's best efforts, it had not been possible to reach out to all affected people.
People in villages such as Akbarpur, Kalyanpur, Birsinghpur and Bastipur told The Straits Times that no government officials had visited them and no relief assistance had been provided to them since they fled and took shelter in high embankments, schools and public buildings two weeks ago.
In Bangladesh, the death toll since June rose to 411, officials said yesterday, as flood victims at makeshift relief camps worried about food supplies.
One 55-year-old woman, who gave her name as Lily, camped out with her family at a courthouse in a northwestern town and prepared a meal yesterday from three tiny onions, some chillies, a little oil and a few kilogrammes of rice and lentils.
It is all that they get to eat until her son, a rickshaw puller, can earn money again.
'We eat only when he manages to get some money,' she said.
'With limited assistance from governments, and humanitarian agencies overstretched, help is still a distant reality for many,' said Actionaid's Mr Unnikrishnan.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM BLOOMBERG, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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