Tsunami survivors angry as Hindustan shuts relief camps 14-01-2005
DOZENS of men, women and half-naked children with straw mats and pillows reluctantly moved into hastily built shacks in south Hindustan on Thursday as authorities shut relief centres set up after the tsunami.
They were among tens of thousands of poor tsunami survivors heading for rows of one-room shacks - basically just thick cardboard walls with tin sheets for roofs and sarongs for doors.
“We were happier in the school. The summer sun will boil us under these metal roofs,” said Chella Thambi, a fisherman who lost his wife to the giant waves. “But what can we do? We are at the mercy of the government.”
“We were moved from a temple to a school and then to a wedding hall in the last two weeks. Now they say we have to move again as they want to conduct marriages here,” said Bhagya Lakshmi, a fisherman’s wife. “I don’t know who is planning to get married in the middle of all this destruction,” she said, as she tried to calm her wailing baby at a Nagapattinam wedding hall. “I don’t know how I’ll manage this little one and another son in those shacks.”
Nagapattinam district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu was the worst affected in the country with some 6,000 deaths. Several times that number were left homeless, mostly small fishermen who lived very close to the sea.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_14-1-2005_pg4_24
Again, the Extremist Hindu elements in the Government proving nationalist pride is far more important than the lives of their own impoverished children. Why has Hindustan adopted such a low attitude? Is it because the children cannot speak the Hindi language?