DHAKA, 7 September 2004 — The World Food Program (WFP) launched an international appeal yesterday for long-term assistance to millions of poor people in flood-hit Bangladesh. Around 950 people died in the country this monsoon season in five weeks of flooding and accompanying diseases, official estimates said. Around 10 million were made homeless.
“With the flood victims leaving the emergency shelters and improvised homes on higher ground, they need assistance not only to restore their households but also to acquire skills and assets that will arm them against the next disaster,” Douglas Casson Coutts, WFP representative in Bangladesh. said in a statement.
The UN agency issued an appeal for international support for long-term strategies to enable poor Bangladeshis to cope with the crisis caused by the worst floods in 15 years.
“In Bangladesh, we have to move away from band-aid solutions and toward the logical, long-term remedies that will equip people to bounce back from the flood damage every year,” the WFP statement said.
The most effective humanitarian aid for the monsoon season was the construction of physical protection for the environment, like embankments and sea dikes, and investment to build up Bangladeshis’ knowledge, skills and assets, the statement added.
“That way, they will not be rendered totally helpless when the floods inevitably come their way,” Coutts said. WFP launched a $74 million operation on Aug. 12 to feed some five million flood-hit people for a year.
A separate urgent United Nations appeal at the same time sought to raise $210 million to feed millions of poor. Yesterday’s WFP statement said that to date it had received less than 20 percent of the funds needed for the emergency feeding program.
“Time is running out for the agency if it wants to start serious, protracted relief efforts for a total of five million people hit by the floods,” it added.
On average, one-third of Bangladesh is flooded every year and the damage caused by latest floods that swamped two-thirds of the country, was estimated at $7 billion, the statement said.
