Boats ply streets in flooded Kolkata, more rain seen

Boats ply streets in flooded Kolkata, more rain seen

04 Jul 2007 13:03:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
Article Source: AlertnetA man pushes a girl on a makeshift raft down a flooded road in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, July 3, 2007.

REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw

By Bappa Majumdar

KOLKATA, India, July 4 (Reuters) - Volunteers and government officials were using boats to hand out rice and drinking water bottles on Wednesday to thousands of people stranded in their homes due to monsoon flooding in India's eastern city of Kolkata.

"We've been starving since last night," said Chitra Bhowmik, a city resident, her house's ground floor flooded by water.

Weather officials said the teeming metropolis of over eight million would receive more heavy rain as a storm over the Bay of Bengal was hovering near the coast of neighbouring Bangladesh.

Across South Asia, nearly 700 people have died due to storms, flooding and heavy rains over the past 12 days.

In the southern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, around 170 people remained missing after a cyclone last week sparked flash floods, while normal life in Kolkata, one of India's biggest cities, was completely disrupted.

Many berated city officials for the flooding while operations of IT firms were hit as workers failed to reach their offices.

Authorities, fearing more flooding, were using loudspeakers to ask residents keep adequate food stocks at home or leave their residences for dry land. Many grocery shops were closed.

Water also flooded hospitals in Kolkata. Hundreds of people were using life boats to move out of low-lying areas.

Angry residents shouted slogans in many parts of the city, blaming officials in the communist-ruled state for the slow pace of relief, witnesses said.

"WE WILL DROWN YOU"

"Get out or we will drown you in this water," they said, chasing away civic workers in south Kolkata.

Train services were disrupted, most universities postponed examinations and many office-workers took the day off.

The city's information technology hub in the Salt Lake area, which has offices of many multinational companies, also suffered.

In the western state of Gujarat, floodwaters inundated villages and farm lands.

"Water gushes from the highways into our villages... the fertile soil is being swept away," a resident of Palanpur, a small town in north Gujarat, said.

Roadside kiosks and temples were also inundated and water lapped at the walls of schools and houses in low-lying areas. Many factories were closed in the highly industrialised state.

Government officials said the army has deployed boats to help hundreds of thousands of marooned people.

In Pakistan's desert-like Baluchistan, Chief Minister Jam Mohammad Yousaf said the death toll in flash floods had risen to 132.

"The floods affected about 2.25 million people and left up to 150,000 homeless," he told a news conference in the provincial capital, Quetta.

The floods swept away roads and bridges, damaged crops, and washed away gas pipelines. The cyclone and severe flooding caused losses of 90 billion rupees ($1.5 billion).

($1=60 Pakistani rupees)

(Additional reporting by Rupam Jain Nair in Ahmedabad and Gul Yusufzai in Quetta)