Displaced people in DRC live in ‘appalling conditions’

By Godfrey Olukya

ARU, Democratic Republic of Congo

The Norwegian Refugee Council said Wednesday that people displaced by violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Tanganyika province face appalling living conditions.

Its assessment revealed that thousands of families have little or no shelter in areas where they have fled to.

Over half a million people in Tanganyika province have fled their homes due to violence over the past 15 months, especially between the Pygmy and Bantu peoples. Most families fled to the Kalemie and Nyunzu regions.

“Tanganyika is on the brink of a deadly disaster. It’s a catastrophic cocktail about to blow up,” said Ulrika Blom, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director in DR Congo.

“The province is a forgotten crisis within a forgotten crisis.”

The agency said 80 percent of the displaced people have no access to clean drinking water while three in four do not have access to latrine toilets.

“Families I met in Kalemie town are surviving in sub-human conditions,’’ Blom said, adding in some flooded areas, parents are sleeping standing up or staying awake to avoid drowning.

"It’s inconceivable that people are living like this,” Blom added.