WAYANAD (UCAN): Caritas India is providing victims of the Wayanad landslide in southern Kerala with short- and long-term rehabilitation help, a senior official of the charity said on August 14.
“We are focusing now more on rehabilitation with immediate and long-term measures,” Abeesh Antony, Caritas India’s programme associate in Kerala.
“Our partners from Mananthavady, Sultan Bathery, and Calicut dioceses rushed to the Meppadi forest division in northern Wayanad district after a massive landslide wiped out four villages on July 30 that left more than 400 dead and over 200 missing,” Antony said, adding, “At that time, our focus was more on rescue and relief operations.”
After visiting Wayanad on August 11, Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said there would be no dearth of funds to undertake rehabilitation work for more than 500 families whose houses were destroyed in the landslide in the Western Ghat mountains on Kerala’s eastern border.
Wayanad district authorities relocated people in the Meppadi panchayat [local administrative division] to relief camps; thousands of people are housed in them. Catholic churches there operate a few relief camps.
Our team is engaged in distributing food, clothes, kitchen utensils, drinking water, and sanitary items to the victims, Antony said.
“We support 525 families with WASH [water, sanitation, and hygiene],” tailor-made for women, infants, and elderly people and offer them “direct cash transfers,” he added.
“Imparting disaster preparedness and sustainable development practices are part of the long-term recovery measures,” Father Antony Fernandez, associate director of Caritas India, said.
“Our team conducted a field study on August 4 and found many survivors were in dire need of psychological support. We have started giving them counselling,’ Father Fernandez, said August 14.
Southern Kerala state is home to 44 rivers and the Chaliyar River, originating from the Western Ghat, flows through Wayanad to the Arabian Sea.
Many bodies and mutilated body parts of victims were fished out from the Chaliyar River in the latest disaster after a massive rescue operation, which is still ongoing to trace the missing people.
The UK-based World Weather Attribution said in a study, conducted by a group of climate scientists, researchers and institutions, that the landslide in Wayanad was caused by climate change.
