(ERGO) – Displaced families on the outskirts of Beletweyn town in southern Somalia’s Hiran region are sleeping out in the open after heavy rains destroyed their makeshift huts.
The calamity affecting 250 families in the worst-hit Halane camp comes only months after they were badly affected by river flooding in the area.
Abdiyo Osman, a divorced mother with children, told Radio Ergo that she and her eight-member family stayed awake all night. Her hut in Halane has no proper roof and was not even solid enough to prevent the water flooding them from all sides.
They have spent whole nights standing up, as the rainwater flooded the ground, sweeping away some of their belongings.
“My children are drenched by the rain and there is no one to help us. I don’t even have plastic to put on the roof to prevent the water from coming in,” said a desperate Abdiyo.
“Shelter is our biggest need, but we don’t even have a toilet either. Our toilet was damaged by the rains, so we are now we have to use our neighbour’s.”
Abdiyo, like most people in the camp, has no regular source of income. She has worked occasionally washing clothes in people’s houses, or collecting wood and grass for sale.
But nobody wants to buy soaked firewood, so collecting and selling wood is not viable during the rainy season. During the five days it rained last week, she had to stay at home without any work.
Sheikh Hussein Osman, deputy head of social affairs in Hiran, toured the IDP camps with other officials to assess the situation. He said the people urgently need better shelter to prevent their condition from deteriorating.
He added that he reported the situation to humanitarian organisations in the region, and asked why the IDPs in Hiran were being neglected whilst those in other regions were being settled in proper houses.
“To all the humanitarian organisations in Beletweyn, we cannot accept plastics anymore, plastics don’t hold off the water!” he declared. “In Koshin and Nasteho camps, all they had was plastic and the water came pouring through. The IDPs in all four neighborhoods lack adequate shelter, so stop the plastic and build them tents,” he said.
Adding to the woes of the IDP families in Halane camp is the poor condition of the roads leading to the camp. The roads were damaged by the river Shabelle floods last October and have been worsened by the heavy rains over the past week.
Halane camp was established in 2010 to host families displaced by the drought and clan conflicts in Hiran and Bakool regions. The last time the camp received any humanitarian assistance was last November, during the response to the river flooding.
Residents of Beletweyn fear that there will be a repetition of the devastating river flooding again this year, as the river levels rise with the rain.
