Reza Mahmud, back from Teknaf :
The Rohingya refugees who failed to get shelter in any temporary camps or makeshift houses in the Cox’s Bazar district are sufferings endlessly.
“I have not got any little space in any camp to lay down with my minor son. All the day and night I hold my baby in my lap. Frequently, I lay down him beside the road where the dust or mud is a permanent matter,” said Asiya Khatun, a Rohingya woman, in Teknaf.
She said that they came from a nearby village of Maungdaw township in Myanmar on September 17 but they are yet to get any place in refugee camps.
She said her husband, one minor son and a daughter are struggling hard to collect relief from the donors.
Asiya Khatun said, “Donors come with vehicles and give us foods, fruits and different materials. It helps us survive. But the painful matter is that we have not got any tiny space to sleep at night.”.
“It is our fate. Our homeland failed to keep us in own houses. It is unbearable sufferings. But the most agony comes during the rainfall. We, the women staying outside the camps keep our kids covering only by cloths.
After ending the rain we pour water from the wet clothes and wipeout the kids,” said Fatima Khatun, another women at Palangkhali road.
On the spot visits in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas in Cox’ Bazar, this correspondent found that huge numbers of Rohingya people were sitting beside the roads.
They fled from the Rakhine state of Myanmar after the violence started there on August 25.
Some of the Rohingyas got shelter in temporary camps in Kutupalong, Palongkhali, Thaingkhali and BaluKhali in Ukhiya Upazila and Nayapara, Unchiprang and other temporary camps in Teknaf Upazila in Cox’s Bazar district.
According to sources, around 4.5 lakh Rohingya people entered Bangladesh since the latest violence occurred in the Rakhine state of Myanmar on August 25.
Many of the refugees have been accommodated in temporary camps made by polythene sheets, ropes and bamboos.
But all of the refugees cannot get place in those camps. And the rest of them are floating here and there looking for shelters and passing their days and nights under the open sky on the road sides.
Most of them were women and children. They are staying with little and medium flocks.
The women were wearing black Burkhas and Hijabs. They had their children with them. But their male people were trying to collect relief materials from the volunteers.
The trucks of volunteers were frequently going through the roads and giving foods, fruits and water bottles to the road side refugees.
They can feed themselves and their children from the volunteers but when night becomes deep they get more helpless due to lack of shelter.
When contacted, Mohammad Ali Hossain, Deputy Commissioner of Cox’s Bazar, said, “It is really difficult to give shelter to the uncountable refugees still coming from Myanmar. We are trying to ensure discipline among the refugees to count and register them and to give relief properly.”
Apart them, the refugees from the temporary camps said that their tiny makeshift houses also nearly nothing because it was full of mud.
The tie of the rope, polythene and bamboos are too weak to protect the refugees from normal wind and rain water, they said.
