Prisoners lose blankets to cyclone survivors

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32459, 20 November 1970, Page 13

Prisoners lose blankets to cyclone survivors

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

DACCA (East Pakistan), November 19.

Blankets are being taken from prisoners in gaols in East Pakistan, to be given to survivors of the devastating cyclone who are now facing death from hunger, thirst, disease and exposure.

Harassed officials in the ravaged islands, which are still covered by ankle-deep mud and debris, began going through die prisons yesterday, gathering up blankets as a stop-gap relief measure.

Unofficial estimates put the final death toll from the cyclone and tidal wave at up to two million.

The officials’ desperate attempt, at least to keep survivors warm, emphasised the acute problem of getting aid to the isolated low-lying Ganges Delta disaster zone. Relief supplies from abroad are steadily piling up in Dacca, but there is still only one helicopter in East Pakistan available to deal with them.

The United States and Britain have already been asked by the relief commissioner, Mr A. M. Anisuzzaman, for helicopters, and they are sending them, but officials in Dacca say they will not go into action until the week-end.

Thirteen shallow-draught British Army boats are also being sent from Singapore; each will be able to take 15 passengers plus two crew.

The relief commissioner said last night that he had no news of Soviet Union, or Japanese or Chinese aid, though he said he was in touch with the consuls of those three countries. Toll forecasts News reports in Dacca now predict astronomical death tolls. The English-language “Daily Dawn” forecasts 1.5 million, for instance, and the Bengali daily “Songgram,” 2 million, or 90 per cent of the, whole population of the devastated area.

Two leading Bengali newspaper executives say they are convinced that a concentra-

ted effort is being made to inflate the figures, so that the Government will postpone the elections due in Decern- i ber. Campaigning has been muted, but not halted, by the j disaster.

The latest official toll is 34,000 confirmed dead.

s The International Red | Cross Committee in Geneva reports that two and a half 1 million people have been: > left destitute. At the United Nations, 42 : countries supported a resolu-1 i tidn calling on the General : , Assembly to issue a world ; appeal for generous contribu-i tions towards emergency relief. 1 Reports from the area de- < cimated by the tidal wave t | still speak of bodies and car- ] cases strewn all over the ; place, bloated after days in ] the water and tropical heat, and giving off an unbearable t stench. i Many of the dead were < buried in mass graves in the t first few days, but those who survived, now exhausted and t weak with hunger, seem in-1 capable of much effort. t s Disease threat < < The rotting bodies and car- i cases have endang'red water 1 supplies and raised the t spectre of a widescale out- • break of diseases, such as cholera and typhoid. A number of cholera cases have been reported on Hatiya one of the islands worst hit' by the tidal wave; and unconfirmed reports say that cholera has also broken out on three other islands. The New York Times News Service reports that relief workers who reached one of the hardest-hit offshore islands have sent back word that there was no need for ithe children’s clothing they had taken with them, because 1 all the children there had 1 died.

, Other teams leaving Dacca 'were advised to take with them only clothing for adults. Mr Arthur Rab Choudhry, a Government official now helping to direct the relief work, lost 51 members of his family; they had gathered in his village to harvest the I rice crop shortly before the cyclone and tidal wave ■struck.

The Government of East Pakistan announced yesterday that the disaster zone

I would be treated as a “major i calamity” area. It has can- ' celled leaves for all Government employees engaged in relief work, having been severely criticised for not having done $o earlier. Students demanding the action had marched through the streets of Dacca. The Associated Press says that international wrangling

over air transport has contributed to delays in the delivery of relief supplies, according to officials in Dadca. Mr Anisuzzaman refused three times to answer queries at a news conference yesterday about the inability of the military to provide aircraft. Other relief officials said that delay had been caused by Pakistani insistence that the country’s own pilots should fly the American helicopters. When the United States refused, Pakistan relented, and the first two helicopters are due to arrive today from Katmandu, Nepal,

■ where they work under contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The New York Times News Service reports that among the latest aircraft to arrive with supplies are those from Switzerland and West Germany. A Boeing 707 is reported to have transported 25 tons of tents, clothing, blankets and medicine from West Germany, and to have flown to Turkey for another load. Radio Pakistan reports that two plane-loads of relief supplies have arrived from Iran. Other countries sending relief goods include the United States, Britain and France. The United States is also providing, as its initial contribution, SUSIOm worth of emergency food supplies. President Nixon ordered the use of funds held in Pakistan that are owed to the United States for such items as grain purchases, and the reimbursement of direct dollar relief costs.