New Shelters – and hope – for refugees in Salt Lake
By a Staff Reporter, New Shelters are coming up in the sandy wastes of Salt Lake for the evacuees from Bangladesh. A more permanent affair with tin roofs. Not the crude shelters they are in now.
Monsoon is round the corner and in the next few days it will grow in intensity and is certain to multiply the miseries of the four million people scattered all over West Bengal in makeshift camps. The menace that is cholera is still to be tackled. And, with monsoon floods, the scourge may even aggravate.
So the new shelters for evacuees. To protect them from the rains, from the blistering sun. To save them from disease and squalor.
The Government proposes to accommodate about 50,000 evacuees in the Salt Lake camp. This is one of the five larger semi-permanent camps to be set up in the State.
When I visited the area on Friday, I saw miles of sandy waste stretching up to the Krishnapur Canal flowing across. The Sky was dull and overcast. But it did not rain.
The road is bad. At least the last stretch of a mile or so. Quite a large number of people were struggling to put up huge bamboo structures.
Some kids from the adjoining villages were enjoying the treat. They did not really know what was happening. One of the kids, however, guessed that the huge pandals were being erected for “Jai Bangla.”
Also there were some foreigners. The doctors and nurses who had come from UK Representatives of the “War on Want”, an organization which has enlisted their services to render to the evacuees.
They were moving around with weird-looking gadgets. Somewhat like a flashlight – slimmer though. Some kids gathered around them. One of the foreigners coaxed one of them to bear his aim, touched the mysterious thing on his forearm and it was all over in a matter of moments. The kid did not flinch, smiling still. Yet, he had been inoculated and immunized against cholera.
A few folders including rural belles who were watching the thing from a distance with bemused interest also came forward. Initial hesitations had been overcome. The people queued. To be inoculated to be immunized against cholera by machine – without pain.
While some of the group worked in the camp site, some others penetrated deep into the neighboring village on their mission of mercy. They came back tired and exhausted after their trek to the village but happy with the day’s work.
All of them sat for tea. But not before they had made sure that we too – myself and our photographers had been inoculated. We were asked to roll up our sleeves. We did.
Dr. Peter Wallaneur, a lanky bearded doctor from Frankfurt assisting a German team “medico International” said that the team proposed to set up a field hospital in the area. Dr. Walleneur has been in India for the last three weeks and visited most of the evacuee camps.
He observed that the evacuees required individual medical care and treatment, good sanitary and hygienic conditions and high protein food to sustain them.
Dr. Wallaneur who was waiting for the arrival of his other teammates and supplies from West Germany had left his hospital in the suburbs of Frankfurt on leave.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 13.06.1971