PURI: For eight-year-old Debasish Paschimakabat, from Dokanda village in Puri, it was another day without study. Enrolled at Dokanda Primary School, the Class-III student has not attended classes for last one week as the village is inundated in waist-deep floodwater since August 16.
He can’t catch up with studying at home either. There is simply no electricity since last three days. With a 33 KV powerline on the Daya river snapped, villages in both Delanga and Kanas blocks are now without electricity and reeling under darkness for over 48 hours. Communication is badly disrupted in the affected villages as people are not even able to charge their cell phones.
Debasish, however, is not the only kid going through this ordeal. Students from Dokanda face the same problem. Power cuts were a regular affair but now, darkness descends once the sun goes down. With flood water still circling the homes in other villages, even the little ones have nowhere to go. They can’t study, they can’t play. And the muddy waters are full of surprises.
Across Kanas block, about 50 km from Bhubaneswar, flood water is all they have. Villagers bathe there, use the water for sanitation and walk through it all day. Health and hygiene have gone for a toss. Lack of access to toilets and poor sanitation poses serious health hazards, especially for women and children. Officials of the district administration said health teams have been dispatched to the affected areas for regular inspection, while relief measures have also been taken to provide cooked food and dry ration to the villagers in both blocks.
For travelling from one village to another, boats are the only option. Villagers risk travelling without life jackets to buy essentials. Flood-affected villages in both the blocks are dealing with the scarcity of potable water, irrespective of the fact that these villages are less than 40 km away from the district headquarters that has been declared Odisha’s first city to have a drink-from-tap facility for all.
“With all the water bodies contaminated, we are mostly dependent on drinking water from the well of another village nearby,” said Kanhu Charan Dalai, a villager from Tarapada in Badasa Panchayat of Kanas. Dalai said most of the villagers are taking baths in the floodwater in the absence of any other alternative. Meanwhile, students struggle with their studies as schools are shut down.
Swarnalata Champati, the HM in charge of the Dokanda primary school says textbooks and notes of many students have been ruined after floodwater entered the homes. With the scholarship exam of Class-III and V students due in September, this has become a matter of concern for everyone in the villages, the School HM said. Officials in the district said they are collecting data on the students affected by the flood. The damage assessment of the schools will also be done once the situation improves.