This Article is From Sep 08, 2015

A Year After Floods, Kashmir Family Still Can't Send Daughter To School

The administration in Kulgam says villages such as Kilamgund are always in danger of being flooded.

Kulgam: It has been exactly a year since floods devastated countless lives in Kashmir. But even today, there is scant sign of redemption at the Dar household.

In the remote Kilamgund village of South Kashmir's Kulgam district, Mohamad Yousuf Dar and his family have been living a life of pain, dispossession and despair.

Stricken with worry and grief after they lost everything in the floods a year ago, Mr Dar had an accident which has left him disabled. Today, even earning a living seems beyond reach.

"When floods washed away everything including my home, I lost my mental balance. I met with an accident.  I lost land, crops, trees, cattle, cowshed - everything," Mr Dar says.

His paddy field is now a rocky desert, covered in silt and boulders. His daughter, Humaira, a class nine student had to drop out of school because the family has a zero income.

"How can I go to school? We have no money for the fees. I don't even have a uniform," she says.

A total of 37 residential houses and dozens of cowsheds and granaries were washed away in Kilamgund.

Mr Dar's family was just one of many that were scarred, perhaps irreparably, and just one instance of how inadequate government aid has been to reverse the heartbreaking tragedies.

While he got Rs 75,000 from the state and Rs 1 lakh from the Prime Ministers relief fund, all of it was all spent on his treatment and rebuilding their home remains a dream.

The administration in Kulgam says villages such as Kilamgund are always in danger of being flooded and they are planning to permanently rehabilitate 700 families, but it will take time.

"Once that permanent rehabilitation is done, I think we have to get back and give them land where they can practice farming," said Syed Abid Radhid Shah, district magistrate Kulgam.
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