After a six-year-old girl allegedly passed away on Friday from famine and disease at a temporary shelter close to a gas station on the National Highway in the Patni region, some 200 flood-affected families demonstrated in Sukkur, Sindh.
According to protesters, Rohri mukhtiarkar authorities failed to “give them food and other relief commodities in time.” They claimed that since arriving in Sukkur from the Jacobabad region after the rains destroyed everything they had, they had been waiting for government assistance.
The protesters said that the authorities had simply come to gather information and that neither had given any help, including food, tents, mosquito nets, or other necessities so that their families could be protected from sickness and their starving children could be fed.
The protesters also claimed that no medical team had been to check on their women and children, who had been afflicted with various illnesses since the rains.
Khalid Khoso, the girl’s father, claimed, “We went to the mukhtiarkar’s office in Rohri for assistance when our children began to starve, but neither food nor tents were given to us. My six-year-old daughter Razia passed away in the interim from malnutrition and illness.”
According to the demonstrators, as word of the girl’s passing spread, locals and former Khoso Ittihad Farman Khoso members assisted the family with the girl’s funeral and gave ration bags to all the households affected by the rain.
Farman Khoso pleaded with the district government in a statement to care for the vulnerable families affected by the rain and give them food right away so that no more kids perished from famine.
Locals said that the Sukkur bench of the Sindh High Court has ordered administrative officials to house the flood-affected individuals in camps and supply them with relief supplies.
