The harvest has largely benefited landowners, while most of the 20,000 people on the Bijoy barrage, who took shelter on the flood protection embankment after losing their land to the Teesta, face starvation due to continued unemployment.

Sources said only young men able to endure the rigours of harvesting managed to get jobs in the rice fields, while women, children and old people remain malnourished with no jobs.

The remoteness of the barrage from the villages also contributes to the lack of job opportunities for these land-less, ultra-poor sections of the society.

Asgar Ali, a 70-year-old man who barely subsisted as a seasonal labourer in his younger days, is now facing starvation after remaining unemployed for years on end.

Many others like Asgar said they received food relief from the government only twice during Ramadan.

The desperate poor ran expectantly towards these correspondents thinking they were government relief workers, only to be left heart-broken once they came to know they were visiting journalists.

"My sons work in far-off Comilla, so there is no-one to feed me," explained Asgar. "I am sick and can't work. What am I going to do?"

Some others like Hajeron and Shaheron have taken to scavenging through the paddy fields looking for sheaves of paddy falling from vans and trucks during transportation.

Sulaiman, a seasonal worker supporting a large family on the barrage, was found sitting hopelessly by the roadside after getting only Tk 30 from the sale of fish he caught in the Teesta during the day.

"I can't go looking for work in other districts because I can't leave my family who are heavily dependent on me," said Sulaiman.

Mothers are particularly in trouble because they have an average of three children to care for, making it difficult for them to venture out for work.

Although the monga severely affected Rangpur like several other northern districts this year, refugees on the barrage said monga is an annual scourge that they have to deal with every year.

Moreover, NGOs are yet to start their operations in the area since they consider the shelter on the barrage to be temporary. Neither has the government taken any steps to bring the barrage people under its development plans.