Don’t forget the flood victims

Bangladesh has a lot on its plate right now. With the Rohingya crisis taking up the bulk of our resources, flood victims are being neglected, while government relief worked has stopped. The interim country director of Oxfam has admitted that both the government and international donors are paying more attention to the Rohingya crisis, which means countless Bangladeshis facing hunger and starvation are seeing their hopes for aid dwindling rapidly. Many families are still overwhelmed with the after-effects of the floods that have hit this year, killing 150 and damaging -- sometimes destroying -- hundreds of thousands of houses. It is a grim thought indeed that taking care of flood-hit people across the country has taken a backseat to the refugee crisis near the Myanmar border. The residents of the 32 flood-hit districts are, right now, in dire need of our attention and some relief -- these people are still reeling from the disaster, and are barely getting by. It is nothing short of tragic when children have to go to bed hungry because the relief they were waiting for never arrived. Bangladesh is a flood-prone country -- we know this. Large swathes of the country get washed away every year, and it is an alarming prospect that climate change is making this worse. And, as always, it is the poorest of the poor who get hit the worst, and end up losing whatever meagre possessions they had in the first place. Flood victims count on the government’s support -- let us not let them down.