By Karen Michelmore in Dili
November 07, 2006 12:00
November 07, 2006 12:00
THERE'S a new crisis looming for the people of devastated East Timor – the approaching rainy season.
Authorities fear the monsoon – due any day – will have dire consequences for the estimated 25,000 Timorese still sheltering in tents in Dili's 52 refugee camps, six months after violence first exploded across the capital.
Many are still afraid to go home, despite the presence of 1000 Australian troops and 900 international UN police, and some have nothing left, with hundreds of homes destroyed in the violence.
But authorities say Dili – built in a water catchment area – will flood when the rain starts.
At least 11 of the camps are expected to be inundated, creating breeding grounds for mosquito-borne diseases, such as Malaria, or cholera.
Authorities plan to close four of the camps – next to the airport, another opposite the UN barracks, at the hospital and beside Dili's Hotel Timor – which house an estimated 7000 people.
"Hopefully people will leave these four camps," said Luiz Vieira, from the International Organisation of Migration.
"If they don't move out ... the place is going to be flooded, what little they own is going to get wet.
"The situation is going to be dire, not to mention the risk to health."
An hour of rain three weeks ago flooded a number of the camps, including the airport camp, and 48 families moved into the terminal, one aid worker said.
"It was absolutely nothing (compared to the rainy season) and it was a disaster," she said.
Authorities will talk to those displaced by the violence and try and find alternative places for them to go.
They are also working to upgrade conditions in the camps and improve drainage and sanitation.
"Even with all we are doing, the conditions won't be adequate," Vieira said.
Moving displaced people will likely be a tough task.
Many of those who fled the violence – like Zuleta Korea who is sheltering in a tent with two other families at the airport camp – remain fearful and have no other place to go.
"We are living here because we are scared or afraid ... people already burn our home and destroy everything," she said.
"At the moment I don't have anything in the village, our home, everything, is already destroyed."
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