Flood victims run pillar to post for relief material

Chaos has hit relief distribution in flood-ravaged Kashmir as some survivors of the natural calamity from the summer capital of the state are running from pillar to post to get food grains but to no avail.

Officials at various relief camps refer the flood-victims to the nearest police stations to get the food grains -- mostly rice is in demand -- but the police officials say they do not have stocks to distribute.

Ghulam Rasool, a resident of Padshahi Bagh in Srinagar, approached the Saddar police station with an application for release of food grains for his locality. The application was addressed to the relief officer in charge of the concerned area who had marked it to Saddar police station.

“The police officers are telling us now to go to Sheikhpura in Budgam district for getting rice bags. We have been going around for two days now but to no avail,” Rasool said as he was coming out of police station.

Rasool claimed that while several truck-loads of relief have been coming to neighbouring areas nothing reached Padshahi Bagh locality.

A senior police officer said there was no relief material stored in the police stations in his area. “What shall we distribute when we have nothing here?” he asked.

He said the relief material coming from various areas arrives at the police station concerned but police does not distribute it and hands it over to local committees.

“Police has its plate full already. We are recovering bodies from flooded areas and there are reports of more bodies being sighted by locals in collapsed houses. In such a scenario, we cannot take the additional responsibility of relief distribution,” the officer said.