Heavy rains threaten food security

Heavy rains have threatened food security in parts of Tajikistan, as the banks of a river burst in an area near the capital, Dushanbe. The flood comes within days after heavy rains killed a child in the southeast of the country over the weekend. "Mud could be seen flowing down one of the main roads, which had to be closed," Paul Handley, a humanitarian affairs officer for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Tajikistan, told IRIN from Dushanbe on Thursday. "Although there is no food-security emergency, people will have needs." The five villages affected were Lenin, Komsomol, Sovnarkom, Alibegi and Tajikobod, in the Kolkhoz Russia region, 10 km southeast from Dushanbe, damaged after a 5-km strip of land between two rivers, the Kofernihon and Ilyak, some 10 km southeast of Dushanbe, was flooded. Some 110 houses lost their kitchen gardens, placing them in a vulnerable position. At around 20:00 local time on Wednesday, residents became concerned that the rivers, particularly the Ilyok might burst its banks. Around midnight, the water breached the dyke, flooding agricultural land, Handley said. OCHA, together with representatives from the World Food Programme and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), visited the site of the flooding in Kolkhoz Russia on Wednesday, following a request from the Ministry of Emergency Situations. This was conducted in parallel with assessments from Global Partners, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the National Red Crescent Society of Tajikistan (NRCST). "The Red Crescent has taken the lead role in supplying the needy with non-food items on a case-to-case, house-to-house basis," he added. According to Handley, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reacted quickly by working with the local community to drain waterlogged areas. Villagers in Kolkhoz Russia said eight houses were damaged beyond repair, along with a number of agricultural buildings. Livestock was also lost. The Federation and Red Crescent missions agreed that some families were only in need of immediate and short-term food assistance to replace damaged stocks kept in their houses, as their gardens had largely survived. Others who lost significant areas of kitchen gardens would therefore be likely to require longer-term assistance through the summer. While the rain stopped on Thursday, villages were still in need of help. The affected areas had no full-time medical dispensary, only a basic medical house, with the NRCST preparing to provide some short-term medical support. In addition to this, UNICEF visited the three schools in the area, but found no major damage, only floors covered in mud. In a country which is 93 percent mountainous, mud- and landslides are a common occurrence, with aid agencies working on preparing communities for such natural disasters. Wednesday's floods comes days after a child was killed and a dozen homes destroyed as heavy rains triggered massive mud-slides over the weekend. According to an AFP report on Monday, the 12-year-old had died on Sunday after being carried several kilometres by the raging floods, which affected bout 200 houses, the report said.