Plight continues for Aila victims
Perched atop a makeshift refuge processing small shrimps to meet daily food requirements, Amina Khatun's ashen face recalls a lost golden age for herself and her family in the southwest coastal areas.
Amina, 17, is the daughter of Abdul Jalil and a resident of the ninth shura under Shyamnagar upazila in Satkhira.
Jalil owned many enclosures for cultivating shrimp but in May 2009, the devastating cyclone Aila destroyed almost everything and forced them into a life of untold misery. All shrimp enclosures and crop fields were flooded as Aila damaged embankments.
Now Jalil and his elder son catch fish from canals that snake through the Sundarbans, to sustain the family's livelihood. Although Amina was a student of class XI when the cyclone hit, she was forced to leave her studies because her family is unable to bear her educational expenses.
Seeing the large number of people who lost their homes to the cyclone still living on embankments, it is hard to imagine anything new on the horizon that may come to ease their sufferings.
One of their challenges is that their homestead or settlement is under threat, as the support systems necessary for human habitats in the region either collapsed or proves to be unsafe. The major livelihood options practiced by the settlers in the region are fishing, farming, small trade and daily wage labour.
Cyclone Aila reduced physical and natural assets from which inhabitants support their livelihood.
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