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| By Omar Valdimarsson in Cambodia, 15 October 2001 |
A temple on high ground provides a safe area for these villagers. But waiting for the waters to recede and the fields to dry is a tedious business, and the children playing at the water’s edge eagerly receive visitors. |
Floodwater in the region around the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh has been receding, but not fast enough to guarantee the security of the forthcoming dry season rice harvest in some areas. Many villagers are forced to sit it out on high ground in designated safe areas, travelling by boat to tend their livestock.
Floodwaters from the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers in Cambodia have been receding and more than 100,000 families who had been evacuated to safe areas in nine provinces have started to move back to their homes. |
But the situation downstream from the capital Phnom Penh in Takeo province, near the border with Vietnam, is still serious. Large areas are still underwater.
"The slowly receding water is unusual and a very serious concern," said Nhim Vanda, deputy director of Cambodia's National Committee for Disaster Management while on a recent visit to designated safe areas where some villagers are forced to sit out the floods. The Takeo province government says people there lost their entire rice crop in the last flood and if the water does not recede this month, the dry season harvest would also be jeopardized.
While provinces north of Phnom Penh are mostly getting back to normal, the suffering in those near the border with Vietnam continues. It's raining every day and large areas near the Cambodian capital are still flooded, though monitoring stations along the Mekong River report floodwater below the actual danger level.
People in safe areas are keeping their animals along the roadsides until the fields have dried, which probably won't be until towards the end of the year. They travel by boat to the highways to tend their livestock. "It's good to stay here in this safe area," said a woman in a safe area in the grounds of a temple on a hill in Kandal Province, about 50 kilometres north-east of Phnom Penh. "We have water and latrines and our children are not at risk."
She was one of nearly 80 families evacuated to the temple compound as floodwater engulfed the nearby village. Going through the village in a boat, the situation becomes clear. In some places only the roofs of houses - already built on stilts several metres high - are visible.
But life in the safe areas is tedious. With nothing to do but wait for the water to recede and the rice paddies to dry out, boredom quickly sets in. Adults and children alike flock around any visitor who drops by. Anything to break the monotony.
The Cambodian Red Cross, supported by the International Federation's delegation in Cambodia, continues to play a key role in relief work in the country - distributing food, clothing, shelter material, kitchen utensils and, through the health authorities, medicine for fever, coughs and diarrhoea. Supplies are transported by road as far as possible, then by small boats to the safe areas where people from outlying villages stay or collect rations.
But the work is far from over says Seija Tyrninoksa, the Federation's head of delegation in Cambodia. "There is still an urgent need for more help for the affected population," she adds. "Because our original appeal for funds to respond to these floods has not been fully covered, we still haven't been able to distribute all the necessary relief goods to the people who sit and wait helplessly in the safe areas."
At the same time, staff and volunteers of the Cambodian Red Cross are criss-crossing the country to assess the situation in other flooded areas. They have started to prepare over 30 new safe areas in five more provinces for next year's floods.
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