<b>Our Home After Sidr</b> One year on, over a million still homeless
"The high tide took my eight-year-old daughter, and I had my 4-month-old son in my lap. I held him close to me. When I was under water, I tried to hold him up, but he died before I could do so...Then the water whisked him away it too," Shaheda from Barguna shared her horrific experience during cyclone Sidr, the second most devastating cyclone to hit Bangladesh in a century. For almost a year Shaheda and her husband have been living in a makeshift home, surviving as day-labourers.
Marking one year after Sidr ravaged the coastal areas of the country, Oxfam GB, a leading donor and humanitarian agency screened a documentary titled "Our Home After Sidr" on November 13 at the Palash Hall of Hotel Sheraton. KH Masud Siddiqui, director general of the Disaster Management Bureau was the chief guest and officially launched the documentary. Theatre personality Aly Zaker, also the CEO of Asiatic Media; Heather Blackwell, country director, Bangladesh Oxfam; Peter Pichler, country director of Swiss Red Cross and BMM Mozharul Huq, chairman of Dhaka Shelter Working Group and UNDP adviser, Humanitarian Response Team were present as special guests.
Shaheda and Shirina from two Sidr-devastated areas shared their experiences with the audience at the event. A discussion highlighting the issues and recommendations regarding the rehabilitation of the Sidr victims followed.
The documentary highlights initiatives taken by several government and non-government organisations to provide immediate relief and shelter to the Sidr victims. Despite funding pledges from foreign governments, international donors and non-governmental organisations to help build new homes for around 78,000 families, only about one-quarter of these planned homes, designed to be more resilient in future storms, have been built. The issue of providing shelter to thousands of people who are still homeless is addressed strongly in the film.
"Communities still need urgent help -- both to recover from the impact of Sidr, and to be able to prepare for future possible natural calamities," said Heather Blackwell at the event.
The tenacity of the coastal people with which they dealt with the after-math of the cyclone, was also focused in the documentary.
"The way these people fight major catastrophes, hats off to them. Bangladeshi People have come a long way since almost 300,000 died in the cyclone of 1970. Though it's still inadequate, Bangladesh government has set an example in disaster management with a limited resource as we saw in the Sidr case. It is now the responsibility of the privileged people to lend a hand," said Aly Zaker in his response after watching the documentary.
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