As rain-hit Chennai struggles to come back to normalcy, adding to the woes is the lack of coordination between government and rescue teams. Truck loads of relief material arrived in Tamil Nadu's capital and hundreds of independent volunteers remained clueless about the areas that required maximum help, The Indian Express reported.
Some of the worst affected districts include Kancheepuram, Cuddalore and Tiruvallur.
"Had there been a media centre and frequent briefing from the government on the status of flood-hit areas and relief work, it would have been great for hundreds of relief workers" said a volunteer according to The Indian Express.
According to a top government official, limited media briefing lead to rumours, which in turn impacted the government's efforts. The relief material coming from other states and cities did not have a destination point, due to unavailability of collection centres, leading to a chaotic situation.
The government's main relief centre Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium remained disconnected from hundreds of independent centres.
"The government machinery remains inadequate in trying to figure out the ground situation. They need to tell us about the precise ground situation so that we can reach there. In many places, relief has already reached. In some cases, volunteers told me about incidents where they found people selling sanitary napkins they received in excess.
"When hundreds of independent volunteers are making their efforts to help people, we have no source of information on places without any flood as we have been depending on unverified information. It would have been great had the government shared their precise information on flood-affected people," a leading actor told The Indian Express on condition of anonymity.
So far more than one lakh people have been evacuated from flood prone areas and the armed forces are still carrying out rescue and relief operations. Sixty two thousand people have been provided shelter at 97 government relief camps in Chennai alone.
