KAHRAMANMARAS (Türkiye): Nearly six months after deadly earthquakes devastated southern Türkiye, thousands of survivors are still displaced, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised a rapid reconstruction, reported Xinhua.
“We are living in containers, and it’s certainly not like living in a proper home,” said Recep Sayilgan, a 41-year-old survivor from Kahramanmaras, the worst-hit province and the epicentre of the massive earthquakes in February.
The powerful tremors have claimed more than 50,000 lives and rendered over a million homeless.
More than 227,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, according to government figures.
Additionally, 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to the disaster, moving to safer cities in the centre-west region, including the capital Ankara, which is 600 km away from the disaster zone.
Despite the support provided by state institutions after the tragedy, Sayilgan and his family would like to return to normalcy “as soon as possible.”
“We were told that new homes would be delivered to us this year, and we are eagerly waiting because living in a container is difficult,” Sayilgan said.
He stressed that communities were distressed about temporary accommodation and hope President Erdogan would make good on his promise to rebuild the devastated cities “within a year.”
Türkiye has already launched construction projects of more than 180,000 new houses in the earthquake-hit region which spans over a large territory of 11 provinces, home to nearly 15 million people.
The first batch of houses will be handed over by October, according to the government, while construction of new container camps for survivors is continuing in the quake-hit areas.
The United Nations Development Programme announced on July 27 the inauguration in Hatay, one of the provinces hard-hit by the earthquake, of a “new container city welcoming 1,500 displaced earthquake survivors.”
Despite a comprehensive mobilisation of relief and rebuilding efforts nationwide, extreme weather, like sweltering heat waves, is exacerbating the suffering of survivors.
“There is a chronic shortage of water supply here in Hatay,” Mahmut Ezme, a survivor who lost relatives and his job in the disaster, told Xinhua.
The authorities dispatched drinking water by trucks to address the water shortage in the province, which is baked by deadly heat with temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius.
“We see that state and local authorities are working to address the water problem, but improvement is slow. We rely on filtered water or bottled water,” he lamented, adding that electricity cuts are also witnessed.
Meanwhile, the huge debris of collapsed or damaged buildings subsequently raised to the ground as they’ve been deemed unsafe is a real challenge for the authorities.
Trucks carrying rubble from the destroyed buildings have become a daily sight on highways across the region.
Although the debris removal would expose a large amount of hazardous asbestos waste, some survivors were still glad to see rubble trucks running, as it indicated that construction work is underway.
“I like seeing trucks, because it makes me feel confident that we’ll have a new home soon,” Sayilgan added. – BERNAMA-XINHUA
