Aila aftermath: Bangladesh asks for foreign aid

Bangladesh is seeking foreign aid to rebuild scores of damaged homes and roads. Cyclone Aila battered southern Bangladesh and West Bengal in India, killing almost 300 people just a week ago.

Bangladesh's food and disaster management minister Abdur Razzak told AFP that some half a million people were still stranded after the cyclone wiped out homes and destroyed more than 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) of embankments.

A military and civilian relief operation began soon after the cyclone hit, but many of the low-lying remote areas north of the Bay of Bengal were without drinking water.

"We are struggling to ensure supply of drinking water to the worst affected areas," he said, adding lack of shelter was also a problem.

"We don't need any food or relief, but we are going to seek foreign aid to build embankments and cyclone shelters. We have to build the embankments immediately to protect people from salty water."

Climatic disasters are nothing new to Bangladesh. We have faced many a strong cyclones that killed millions of lives over the past 30-50 years. With all these experience at hand, it was believed that Bangladeshi people are better prepared these days to fight the cyclone than they were some 20 years ago. Yet, the success lies in timely and accurate tracking of the storm path (by the weather department), notifying the public in the hit-prone area through government machinery and volunteers, and participation by the mass people.

The recent devastation by Sidr is still in our memory and that was arguably the worst cyclone that ever hit Bangladesh. But this time the government seems to be late in action. Private TV channels are continuously telecasting the stories from the affected areas, people are starving without food and drinking water. Hundreds of people are suffering from diarrhea and lack of medical supplies and drinking water has made the situation aggravated.

Although the damage in terms of lives are not significantly higher than what it used to be, the print media and the voluntary organizations are not very active this time to help people out with food and other supplies.

I hope, government will act quickly, and handle the problem at hand, rather than drawing international media for help in building infrastructures. Because building infrastructure is important, but it is more important now to give food to the starving people, deploy medical teams to the affected areas so that a greater disaster can be avoided.