Angry Mumbai residents stage protests

Hundreds of angry residents took to the streets of Mumbai today demanding the government clear rotting animal carcasses from the streets and restore water and electricity, as rescuers found more than 100 bodies in the debris of homes destroyed in western India’s devastating floods.

That raised the official death toll to 853.

Chief Secretary Prem Kumar, the state’s top bureaucrat, said the final death toll in Maharashtra state from this week’s monsoon floods could be more than 1,000 because rescuers feared more bodies are still buried under debris in remote areas.

“It could increase by 100 to 150. That’s the rough estimate,” Kumar said, saying rescue work was mostly over and officials were now focusing on providing relief for survivors.

Rain showers began intermittently hitting Mumbai and its outlying areas again today, though with far less force than earlier in the week.

Hundreds of residents in five Mumbai districts raised anti-government slogans and blocked traffic for more than five hours.

While some shielded themselves from rain with plastic shields, others simply got drenched as they demonstrated outside civic offices demanding he immediate cleaning of the city.

“For so many days we have been lifting the bodies of the dead and now we are clearing animals from the roads. Is this our work?” asked a furious Hafeez Irani, his face covered with a handkerchief to keep out the smell of rotting rubbish and dead animals.

“The drains are choked. We still have no electricity,” said Irani, a construction worker. “Can you get this foul smell? We have these handkerchiefs on all the time,” he said.

Civic leaders pleaded with protesters and called for patience, claiming that equipment and workers to clear roads and drains were being called in from other areas hit by landslides.

The recovery of 104 bodies in four mudslide-ravaged villages in the district of Raigad and two Mumbai suburbs raised the official death toll to 853 today, said Kumar.

Most of the deaths occurred due to landslides and flooding after Tuesday’s torrential 37 inches (94 centimetres) of rain cut off the state from the rest of the country.

Four days after the deluge, government and relief officials said there was little likelihood of finding any survivors.

The government issued orders stopping all construction work in the city so trucks could be used to transport rubbish, debris and animal carcasses, mostly of cattle that can be found wandering in most Indian cities, said Satish Shinde, a civic official.

Newspapers have carried warnings about leptospirosis – an infection caused by water contamination. State-run hospitals and health centres geared themselves to distribute free medicines and injections to check any outbreak of disease.

The miserable conditions in Mumbai’s northern suburbs were heightened by the presence of dozens of cowsheds near the shanty townships and residential apartments. The flooding resulted in the deaths of hundreds of livestock and cattle.

As many as 409 people were killed in the city – most drowned in the floods, buried by landslides or electrocuted.

But despite renewed warnings from authorities to move, residents in shanties built into small, crumbling hills in the city’s northern neighbourhoods say they have no place to go.

“We came from the village because there is no work there. This is our home now,” said Sakina Yusuf, a housemaid with three children. “I know they say it’s unsafe...But move where?”