People displaced for worried about flood

ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕ အေရွ႕ပိုင္း ရထားဘူတာအနီး ေျမနိမ့္ပိုင္း တေနရာ

ေရေဘးစိုးရိမ္ၿပီး ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕မႈမ်ားျဖစ္
NEJ/ ၁၇ ဇြန္ ၂၀၀၈

မုန္တိုင္း၀င္ေရာက္ၿပီး ေရႀကီးမည္ဆုိသည့္ သတင္းမ်ားေၾကာင့္ မြန္ျပည္နယ္၊ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္၊ ေခ်ာင္းဆံု၊ ေပါင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ႏွင့္ ေက်းရြာအခ်ိဳ႕တု႔ိမွ ျပည္သူမ်ားသည္ နီးစပ္ရာသို႔ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္း ေနထိုင္ၾကေၾကာင္း ေဒသခံမ်ားထံမွ သိရသည္။
ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕ခံတဦးက “မုန္တိုင္း၀င္မယ္၊ ေရႀကီးမယ္ဆိုတဲ့သတင္းျဖစ္ေနတာၾကာၿပီ၊ ဇြန္လ (၈) ရက္ေန႔ကတည္းက ျဖစ္ေနတာ။ မိုးကလည္း ဆက္တိုက္ရြာေနေတာ့ ေခ်ာင္းဆံု၊ ဘီလူးကၽြန္းဘက္ ပင္လယ္ကမ္းစပ္ေက်းရြာက လူေတြ အတြင္းပိုင္းရြာေတြကို ေရႊ႕လာတာရွိတယ္။ တခ်ိဳ႕ ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ ဘက္ ကူးလာၾကတယ္။ ဘုန္းႀကီးေက်ာင္းေတြ၊ နီးစပ္ရာ မိတ္ေဆြအိမ္ေတြမွာ တည္းခိုေနၾကတယ္” ဟု ေျပာသည္။
ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ၿမိဳ႕ ၀င္းစိန္ေတာရဆရာေတာ္က လာမည့္ ဇြန္ (၁၆) ရက္၌ မုန္တိုင္းတိုက္ၿပီး ေရႀကီး မည္ဟု မိန္႔ၾကားရာမွ ယခုကဲ့သုိ႔ သတင္းမ်ားထြက္ေပၚလာျခင္းျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ယင္းမတုိင္ခင္ ကလည္း ျပည္သူမ်ားသည္ ဧရာ၀တီတိုင္း ေရေဘးသတင္းကို ၾကားသိၿပီး ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕ေနၾက ေၾကာင္း အဆိုပါၿမိဳ႕ခံက ေျပာသည္။
ေလတိုက္ၿပီး မိုးသည္းထန္လာပါက အနိမ့္ပိုင္း ဒိုင္း၀န္ကြင္း ရပ္ကြက္ဘက္မွ ျပည္သူမ်ား က်ိဳက္ သံလံ ေစတီရွိရာ ေတာင္႐ိုးတန္းေပၚမွ ဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီးေက်ာင္းမ်ားတြင္ ညသြားအိပ္ၾကေၾကာင္း၊ ေရေဘးသတင္းေၾကာင့္ ယခုတပတ္အတြင္း ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္တၿမိဳ႕လံုး စည္ကားျခင္းမရွိဘဲ လိုင္းကား စီးသူ နည္းသြားသကဲ့သုိ႔ အနီးအနား ေက်းရြာမွ လူမ်ား အလာက်ဲသြားေသာေၾကာင့္ ေစ်းမ်ား ေျခာက္ကပ္ေနေၾကာင္း ၿမိဳ႕ခံမ်ားကေျပာသည္။
ေမာ္လၿမိဳင္ တဖက္ကမ္း က်ံဳ၀မ္းေက်းရြာဘက္မွ လူမ်ားကမူ ေရေဘးျဖစ္လာပါက အလြယ္တကူ ေျပးလႊားႏိုင္ရန္ တန္ဖိုးရွိပစၥည္းမ်ားကို အိမ္တိုင္းတြင္ ထုပ္ပိုးထားၾကေၾကာင္း၊ ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ စေန ေန႔႔၌မူ ေပါင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ သဲကုန္းရြာတြင္ ေရတက္လာၿပီဟု သတင္းျဖစ္ကာ ရြာသူရြာသားမ်ားသည္ ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚသို႔ အုပ္စုလိုက္ တက္လာၾကေၾကာင္း၊ ယခင္ ေရေဘးခံရဖူးသည့္ ေပါင္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ အလွပ္ ေက်းရြာ၌လည္း ျပည္သူအမ်ားအျပား ကြဲၿခံဘုန္းေတာ္ႀကီးေက်ာင္းသို႔ လာေရာက္ခိုလႈံၾကေၾကာင္း၊ အမွန္တကယ္ ေရမႀကီးမွ ျပန္သြားၾကေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
ေရေဘးျဖစ္မည္ဆုိသည့္ ယခုလ (၁၆) ရက္တြင္ စာသင္ေက်ာင္းမ်ား ဖြင့္ေသာ္လည္း မိဘမ်ားက ကေလးမ်ားကုိ ေက်ာင္းသို႔မလႊတ္သည့္အတြက္ ေက်ာင္းမ်ားတြင္ ေက်ာင္းသူ ေက်ာင္းသား နည္း ပါးၿပီး ေစ်းထဲတြင္လည္း အေရာင္းအ၀ယ္ မရွိသေလာက္ နည္းေၾကာင္း၊ သို႔ေသာ္ ယင္းေန႔တြင္ မိုးသည္းထန္စြာ မရြာေၾကာင္း က်ံဳ၀မ္းေက်းရြာသားမ်ားက ေျပာသည္။
ဘဂၤလားပင္လယ္ေအာ္တြင္ အေနာက္ေတာင္မုတ္သုန္ေလ အလြန္အားေကာင္းလ်က္ရိွၿပီး ျမန္မာ့ ကမ္း႐ိုးတန္းတေလွ်ာက္ႏွင့္ ကမ္းလြန္ပင္လယ္ျပင္တို႔တြင္ မၾကာခဏ မိုးသက္ေလျပင္းက် ေရာက္ၿပီး ေလျပင္းက်စဥ္ ေရျပင္ေျမျပင္ေလသည္ တနာရီ (၄၅) မိုင္မွ မိုင္(၅၀) ထိတိုက္ခတ္ႏိုင္ ေၾကာင္း၊ မုတ္သုန္ေလအားေကာင္းမႈေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာ့ကမ္း႐ုိးတန္းတေလွ်ာက္တြင္ ဇြန္ (၁၄) ရက္ ညေနမွ ေနာက္ (၇၂) နာရီအတြင္း ေနရာအႏွံ႔အျပား မိုးရြာၿပီး မိုးႀကီးႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း ဇြန္ (၁၄) ရက္ မိုးေလ၀သႏွင့္ဇလေဗဒညႊန္ၾကားမႈဦးစီးဌာန၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္တြင္ ေဖာ္ျပထားသည္။ ။

Thousands of Cyclone Victims in Burma Unidentified

Volunteers from a Rangoon-based social welfare association, Free Funeral Service Society, cremate decayed bodies in Kungyangon Township of Rangoon Division. (Photo: AFP)

Thousands of people killed in last month's devastating cyclone in Burma may never be formally identified, due to the slow place of body recovery since the tragedy, say aid workers.
The scale of the disaster—and its wide geographical spread—has meant survivors in many remote communities of the Irrawaddy Delta were left to deal with a large number of bodies, of both family members and strangers, with little, if any, official support.
It is clear from the information we have been given that there is no planned, concerted or consistent approach being taken," Craig Strathern, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told IRIN from Rangoon.
"Mostly it's local communities dealing with the immediate problem in their vicinity," he said.
Some cyclone survivors told aid workers of disposing of bodies any way they could—through burial, cremation, or other methods—in the quest to restore normalcy and get on with rebuilding their lives.
"Farmers were saying they just put some bodies in the river," said John Sparrow, a spokesman for the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), who has just returned from the disaster area. "They were desperate to start their paddy season. If they found bodies they couldn't recognize, they just threw them into the river."
Cyclone Nargis, and the accompanying tidal surge that swept up to 35kms inward, left an estimated 133,000 people dead or missing on 2 and 3 May and 2.4 million destitute.
But more than six weeks on, as aid agencies struggle to distribute food, water and other essential supplies, disposing of bodies has been considered far less of a priority, especially as the World Health Organization (WHO) has said the corpses posed little health risk.
Disposal efforts
In some of the more populated areas and key towns, local authorities did make concerted efforts to collect and dispose of bodies, while extra manpower was also brought in from Rangoon to help with the task.
However, villagers in more remote or isolated areas were left to do it alone.
Reports indicate that in many waterways and remote areas without many survivors, bodies have yet to be collected, and recently more than 300 bodies were said to have washed up on a popular beach in Mon state, hundreds of kilometers from the cyclone's point of impact.
"It's been very much left to the local township commanders and leaders to decide how to deal with the problem," Sparrow said. "You are talking about a widely dispersed area, with limited transport and logistics. It's not surprising those have been prioritized for relief and emergency distribution."
Tsunami precedent
The slow pace of body disposal and lack of any large-scale victim identification effort are in stark contrast with the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, which killed more than 200,000 people.
In Thailand—where foreigners, mainly European tourists, accounted for half the estimated 8,345 dead—authorities set up a forensic operation to identify victims, an initiative supported financially and technically by governments around the world.
The Thai operation used forensic evidence, including fingerprinting, dental records and DNA matching, to try to identify bodies.
In Indonesia, where more than 165,000 people died, efforts were more rudimentary, including visual identification in the first few days, or by personal effects and SIM cards.
But there was a big, official drive to bury bodies quickly in accordance with Islamic custom, and to create marked graves as memorial sites.
"In Indonesia, people accepted they may never find their loved ones, but at least they could go to a marked memorial even if they weren't 100 percent sure their relatives were there," Strathern said.
Identification issues
Burma's cyclone survivors appear resigned to accepting lost loved ones without definite proof, or any ceremonial resting places, while local laws mean formal verification of death is not required.
"Here there is the assumption that if we haven't seen our loved ones for two or three weeks they are probably dead," Strathern said.