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RedR Members respond to the Rohingya Crisis

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Since August 2017, following years of unrest, over 600,000 Rohingya are estimated to have fled into Bangladesh from Myanmar.

In addition to the current flux of refugees towards Cox’s Bazar district, the country already hosted around 200,000 Rohingyas. Refugees in the district are mainly sheltered in two camps, Kutupalong and Nayapara, along with other smaller camps. In addition, as people continue crossing the border, many spontaneous and precarious sites are constantly arising.

RedR Member Bertrand Ngama is a Project Manager with 20-years’ experience in civilian peace keeping/peace building, humanitarian field services and humanitarian logistics. Bertrand is working for Medical Teams International, an American based NGO, in Kutupalong, and Nayampara camps. On the ground he is the head of logistics, procurement, and the supply chain.

“The situation on the ground is still very critical. Nutrition, health, shelter still represent an emergency, along with protection. Indeed, besides the contingent needs of the refugees, it is also urgent to act with the aim of allowing Rohingyas to return to their home with dignity. I have been deployed in many emergency contexts before, such as Haiti, Burundi, Tanzania, or Nepal, however the humanitarian responses to this crisis is proving quite hard, due to the huge number of people that are concentrated in a very small areas. In such situation, any negligence risks having dramatic consequences and big scale impact”.

‘I have been deployed in many emergency contexts before, however the humanitarian responses to this crisis is proving quite hard, due to the huge number of people that are concentrated in a very small area’.

Bertrand Ngama

Project Manager, Medical Teams International

Heavy Monsoon rains limit access to the camps

Paul Jawor is a civil engineer and water and sanitation specialist and has been a RedR member since 1997. In Bangladesh he acted as the Technical Water and Sanitation Lead for Médecos Sin Fronteras (MSF) and he recently returned from a three-week stay in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh. 

Paul explains how hard it has been to reach the camps, due to extreme weather conditions: “As in any emergency, my first priority is to make an assessment. It was immensely hard work, as access to the camps was difficult, because heavy Monsoon rains had left the access roads in deep mud, and they were impassable by vehicles, only access was 30 mins muddy walk to get to each camp. I was helped by three water and sanitation engineers, and we worked in three camps: Jamtoli and Unchiprang, with approximately 35,000 people in each; and Hakimpara, now housing around 50,000 people”.

'The first bucket of clean water we drew left one of my engineers in tears it’s such a great thing to provide people with what they so desperately need'.

Paul Javor

Civil Engineer and Water & Sanitation expert

Finding clean water

Paul explains the challenges he found when he arrived, and how he’s using his training, skills and experience to help overcome them. “When I arrived people were using dirty water from hand-dug wells. It was not drinkable, but people were using it anyway because there was no alternative. We are working on getting the well water potable, by using chemicals to clean it, and then chlorinating it. It is a small-scale solution – we literally have people sitting by the wells, cleaning one 20-litre bucket at a time”.

Paul and his staff used their training from RedR to find a sustainable solution to the problem. "What I learned from RedR training is not to impose a non-sustainable hi-tech solution from outside the culture, but to employ the techniques that people are already using, and modify them as necessary. The priority is to get as much rainwater in the tanks as possible, as the ground water dries up in summer.

We are also considering using a clean-water device to give to Bangladeshis who have taken numbers of families into their own homes. The ‘Paul filter’ (not named after me!) is a wheelie-bin sized tank fitted with an ultra-membrane filter, which removes dirt particles, bacteria and viruses”.

In the picture: WASH intervention in Myanmar (Photo credit @Paul Jawor, 2017)

Building for the future

Despite all the hardships, alleviating the suffering of people is a great achievement for Paul and his team of engineers working in the field: “Although the work has been tough it is incredibly rewarding. The first bucket of clean water we drew left one of my engineers in tears it’s such a great thing to provide people with what they so desperately need”.

Finally, Paul tell us that more efforts are still needed: “The scale of the Rohingya crisis means we need many more people to work here”. In Paul’s view, capacity building in this phase remains crucial: “We have a good Bangladeshi workforce, who are benefitting from paid employment. We need to raise their skills so they can be effective. The best thing RedR does is to train local people. It’s the training that lasts the longest, and stays with them. This is how we make a difference”.

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