A Month More Hundreds House Flooded

Amuntai, S Kalimantan (AntaranewsKalsel) - It has been more than one-month hundreds of homes in Banjang Sub-district, North Hulu Sungai (HSU), being inundated causing disadvantages for the community because they are not free to move and work for a living.

Two villages in Banjang were worst affected, namely Terate and Murung Padang, and one village in North Amuntai Sub-district, Panangian Village. A total of 244 houses where 752 families dwell inundated in the three villages.

"There are also other villages affected by the flood but the condition is not as bad as the three villages, where access to the village has been cut off by the floods for the last one and a half month," said Bambang Rusmadi Juriani, head of the Banjang sub-district, in Amuntai on Saturday.

Rusmadi said the residents are indeed very much looking forward to the help of local governments to provide food aid and evacuation facilities.

The hope of the flood victims was responded by the Regent of HSU and his wife who on Saturday directly visited the three villages affected by the most severe floods in Banjang as well as handed over food and other supplies.

Assistance comes from the government's food reserves from the Office of Food Security, the Social Agency and the HSU Disaster Management Agency (BPBD).

The assistance was symbolically handed over by the regent and the wife to the representatives of the citizens centered in Banjang Village witnessed by the Head of Social Agency, Head of sub-district, Police Chief, volunteers from the BPBD and the disaster preparedness team (tagana).

Regent Abdul Wahid in Amuntai on Saturday said the flood disaster has become a phenomenon almost every year due to the position of the area of HSU in the lower plains and become the meeting point of the flow of two rivers of Tabalong and Balangan.

"For river basin management, the government has been trying to break the river flow in 2009-2010 by dividing the river flow from Kandang Jaya Village in Lampihong Subdistrict to Sungai Terasi of Banjang Subdistrict, but because it is feared to have an impact on the submergence of farmland around the area, so that the water gate is made less functionalized "explained the Regent.

The local government is also trying to make the South Kalimantan Provincial Government provide a solution how to divert the river from Kandang Jaya to the Sungai Terasi then forwarded to Amuntai, so the water is divided into two paths.

"People are expected to be patient, the government will gradually seek to solve this flooding problem, because this year the water debit is more than two years before, not only from the regencies of Tabalong and Balangan but also because of the deforested forest and siltation of the river, "said Wahid.

Furthermore, the Regent visited the location, the flood victims, as well as the preparation of volunteer teams on the flood alert post concentrated in the embankment of Amuntai ducks.