A young girl uses a tea tray to flush water out of a flooded makeshift shelter at Mangateen IDPs camp. April 28th 2023. | Photo: Makuei Chien.

Consecutive heavy downpours have battered Mangateen Internally Displaced Persons Camp in Juba, ripping through makeshift shelters and leaving hundreds in dire situation.

Mangateen IDPs camp chairperson Makuei Chien Jok said the heavy rain has flooded all the shelters at the camp situated northwest of Juba city.

According to Makuei, the vulnerable population mainly women and children have lost their belongings to the running water and have no place to sleep this Friday night.

“The situation at Mangateen IDP Camp today has more than worsened because of the rain. All the houses are filled with water and all the pregnant mothers and children are standing outside the houses because there is a lot of water inside,” he told Eye Radio.

The Mangateen camp was established in 2015 and hosts around 14 thousand internally displaced people who found refuge after the ongoing conflicts in the country.

Makuei said the IDPs have suffered humanitarian neglect for a long time and last received plastic sheets in 2019.

“This is because of damaged shelters, we only received plastic sheds in 2019 until today there is no any organization that intervened in this critical issue, every rainy season its always like that but this year is worsened too much.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Bol an MP representing Mayom County in the Transitional National Legislative Assembly is calling on Humanitarian Organizations to intervene and assist the IDPs in Mangaten Camp.

“In this rainy season the IDPs are facing a lot of challenges and one of them is the issue of shelters since the time they were taken to that place,” Bol said.

“They were provided with plastic sheds that they use as shelter and they have been destroyed by sunshine in this rain the IDPs are actually suffering because they do not have good shelters.”

“I want to appeal to the international (humanitarian) organizations who are working in the field of humanitarian assistance to at least assist these IDPs in Mangaten”.