Help the flood victims

About 760, 000 people have so far been displaced by floods across the country since May 2021, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) confirmed last week. The aid agency listed Upper Nile, Jonglei, Unity, and Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal states as the places that have been hit the most.

In the recent assessment carried out by UNOCHA, priority intervention measures needed to cushion the victims range from food aids to emergency shelters and non-food needs such as water, sanitation, and hygiene services.

In Upper Nile State alone, an estimated 1,500 people had been displaced to the highlands in the four payams of Pakuru, Norpur, Gangi, and Mermer in Koch County in Unity State. The floods also submerged 109 schools, and an estimated 65,000 students have been affected, and this includes more than 1,000 teachers across seven counties of the state.

Several people have been affected by the floods across the country and some are in very remote areas that are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Thanks to the aid agencies that have been supporting the affected people with basic needs. But the demands are too high and keep on increasing. There are people in Old Fangak County of Jonglei State who are to be having nothing completely to feed on except water lilies and fish as their basic source of nutrition.

Recently, the government approved $10 million as an emergency relief package to support people affected by floods in seven states across the country. The relief package approved by the cabinet was meant to help resettle those displaced from their homes and provide food relief to them. It is not known when the money will be made available to rescue the people who have been enduring a lot of suffering since the start of the flood.

The humanitarian agencies have been struggling to support services to the flood victims, and the government now needs to step forward and provide the little it has.

This is because it is the primary responsibility of the government to provide services to its people, whether in times of celebration or sorrow. The $10 million should have been provided at the onset of the flood, but it is almost two years since the people started facing the flood. There is an urgent need to speed up the release of this emergency fund to rescue the population affected by the flood.

Apart from providing relief aid, the government and the partners need to seek a sustainable solution to the protracted floods rather than focusing on their basic needs, which are short-lived and do not address the real problem. A permanent solution needs to be put in place, like the construction of the dykes and the proper utilisation of the floodwaters through agricultural activities, instead of them being wasted on the ground.

After several experiences of disastrous flooding, parliament should now include the flood in the annual budget because this is not the first time the country has experienced a flood. There has always been a flood in the country, except this year’s flood has superseded the record held by those in the 1960s in the country.