Emergency appeals

Two boys amongst those missing in raging floods

31 August 2008

Two young boys forced to work in a factory because of their family’s poverty are amongst hundreds to go missing in flood waters in India’s eastern state of Bihar.

Pappu, aged 14, and Deepak, aged 10, have been missing without a trace for a week and their parents say they are starting to lose hope.

The boys’ devastated father, Piprahi, has been calling the phone number for the sweet factory where the boys worked several times a day only to hear a pre-recorded out-of-order message.

His wife and their other three children are struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Seven-year-old Sabita is too young to understand, but fondly remembers spending time with her brothers when they came home for holidays.

Poverty forced Piprahi and his wife to send the two boys to work at the factory, 12 kilometres from their village. Piprahi explained that because they were trustworthy boys, the shop owner made them work on the fateful Sunday when floodwaters from the Kosi River inundated the area.

Piprahi said that as the floodwaters rose to six feet, people fled to take shelter in villages on higher ground where they had to sleep out in the open with thousands of other people and animals.

As well as facing the possible loss of their two sons, the family has lost all of their possessions including stores of rice, three goats and a cow that were all washed away in an instant.

For now, the family has taken refuge in a school that that has been transformed into a relief centre for displaced families. With hundreds of people arriving every day, health and hygiene is now a major concern.

World Vision is providing displaced families in this centre with relief items including rice, pulses, sugar, biscuits, candles and matches.