The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Nesuti Lakshmi Rani holds up her hands and apologises for the rivulets of mud that run down her tiny wrists towards her elbows.

"I'm digging soil from the river for the roads in our village. I don't want to do this job but it's the only way we can get food," she says.

For her five-hour shift, Nesuti is paid with three kilogrammes (6.6 pounds) of rice.

When cyclone Sidr hit southern Bangladesh on November 15 in 2007, Nesuti and her husband lost their home and livelihood when the couple's 13 cows were washed away in the storm.

"We're living hand to mouth. We used to sell milk but now we have no other way to earn a living," says the 45-year-old mother of four, now living in a hut made from salvaged wood and plastic sheeting in Barguna. Same pictures shown as Bandaria in Priojpur district with the affected coastal district.

After one year, most of the Sidr ravaged people are in smellier, homeless, no workers and no food.

One million people are still struggling without proper shelter and are at greater risk of disease, cyclone Sidr the international aid agency Oxfam said.

But according to government estimate, some 908 people were killed, 63,600 houses damaged and 3 lakh families affected by the cyclone.

They are among 276,000 families that the aid group Oxfam says have received no assistance to rebuild homes destroyed a year ago.

More than 3,500 people were killed during cyclone Sidr, the second strongest storm ever recorded in Bangladesh.

Ferocious winds of up to 240 kilometres (155 miles) an hour and torrential rains uprooted trees, destroyed hundreds of thousands of fragile bamboo and tin homes, and snapped phone and power lines.

"What's difficult is getting funding for the relief and rehabilitation on a longer-term basis because it does go out of people's minds," says Heather Blackwell, head of Oxfam in Bangladesh.

The World Bank, which this week gave a 109 million dollar loan to help Sidr victims, says damage caused to property, livestock and crops was estimated to be 1.7 billion dollars.

The people of the cyclone Sidr ravaged areas yesterday alleged in the city that the relief houses were not properly distributed to the victims.

Bangladesh appealed for 2.2 billion dollars in international aid for the cyclone-hit areas, but a finance ministry official said less than a quarter -- half a billion dollars -- had been received.

Jafar Khan, a labourer whose seven and three-year-old sons were killed in the storm, says his family did not have time to get to the nearest cyclone shelter two kilometres away when the first warning came.

He says he has lost count of the number of times he has been told by government officials and aid workers that his home will soon be rebuilt.

"They keep promising but nothing has changed," he says.

"I'm still living in the same flimsy hut I built after the storm. Now, they're building a cyclone shelter a few hundred metres away. It's too late for my sons though -- they were never given the chance to survive."

Shakawat Hossain, representative of Sidr-affected people of the Bandaria in Priojpur district told journalists at the Dhaka Reporters Unity few days ago that the Chairman and the ward commissioners of the area take money on the plea of providing Tk 3,000 to Tk 20,000 to the Sidr victims as relief for house building of the affected vulnerable families.

Most of the cyclone Sidr victims in the worst-hit Southkhali village in Sharankhola upazila of the district could not yet return to their previous occupations due to want of working capital.

The victims said they were engaged in various occupations, including agriculture, fishing and small businesses but they lost everything due to the onslaught of the devastating cyclone.

Although the homeless people got shelter with the help of the government and NGOs but no employment opportunities were created for them.

The Sidr affected people have been passing hard days, as they have no source of income local elite said. The coming winter will be hard for them without shelter of houses.