Floods roar towards Sindh

Authorities in the flood-ravaged province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have set up an initial relief fund as they struggled on Monday to find an adequate response to the disaster that has left up to 1,500 people dead and displaced at least half a million people.

“We have recorded 774 deaths in our province, but the total number killed in the flood is up to 1,500,” Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told a news conference in Peshawar. “There are 129 people still missing. We succeeded in rescuing 12,823 people,” the minister said.

“Sixty-six million rupees, as an initial fund for relief activities, has been established by the government to start relief activities,” he said. The government, according to him, will supply food rations for at least a month to people residing in camps.

The minister made it clear that the government would not allow the volunteers of ‘banned outfits’ to carry out relief activities.

Officials claimed that they  had rescued almost all the people who were trapped in the flood-hit areas over the past 48 hours. Some 2,600 tourists were evacuated from Kalam but they could not be moved to their respective areas as roads remained blocked. Thirty Chinese engineers, who were working on the Dobair-Khwar Hydel project in Kohistan, were safely evacuated to Bisham. However, the remaining Chinese nationals are still in Kohistan.

Relief efforts in the province are being coordinated by the military and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). Helicopters and boats have so far ferried 28,000 people to safety.

Internal displacement has become a major headache. Disaster management officials estimate that nearly 30,000 homes have been damaged across the country, leaving thousands of people without shelter. But the K-P information minister reckons that up to half a million people were displaced in Nowshera district alone.

At a camp set up by the army for around 640 families from Nowshera, women and children ran after vehicles bringing food and water, pushing and shouting. One of the residents of the camp, Ilyas Khan, complained that there was no proper system for food distribution. “They throw food at us as if we are animals and not humans,” he said.

People at the camp said that the only respite from the crushing heat was plastic hand fans and that there were no proper washrooms, which was contributing to an outbreak of waterborne diseases.

Further up north, flood damage is hampering relief work. The United Nations said on Monday that aid workers were having difficulty accessing the flood-hit zones as key bridges and roads had been destroyed or washed away.

The end does not seem nigh. The meteorological department forecast rains of up to 200 millimetres (eight inches) in the next weeks across the northwest, Kashmir, the central province of Punjab and Sindh in the south. The northwest has already been hit by 312 millimetres (12 inches) of rain in the past 36 hours.

PUNJAB

In Sargodha, people have been forced out on the road after over 50 villages were flooded. Train services have also been suspended in Mianwali and Sargodha. In Dera Ghazi Khan’s Tonsa area, more than four hundred houses have collapsed and thousands of people have become homeless. In Rajanpur, Tibbi Qaiserani and Tonsa, another 74 villages have been submerged and bridges have broken down as thousands are stranded amid the flood water.

Over 900,000 cusecs of water was released from the head chashma in Layyah over the past two days and has now reached Taunsa. Hundreds of people have been rendered homeless in the flood and Busti Qazi has been wiped out.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Monday paid a third visit to flood-hit areas in the district and wrote a letter to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, demanding that the federal government provide ten billion rupees for rehabilitation of flood-affected people in the province. Sharif has given the details of the devastation caused by floods in central and southern Punjab and also mentioned the rescue operations. The death toll from the flash floods increased by 47, 138 more were injured and a total of 1,85,991 villagers were displaced. The floods have damaged 8,16,842 acres of crop across the Punjab province.

DG Relief Punjab, Rizwanullah Baig told APP on Monday that around 15,000 flood affected victims have taken refuge in 84 relief camps at Rajanpur, Mianwali, Khushab, Attock, DG Khan, Layyah and Bhakkar. In 599 villages a total of 2,224 houses were completely destroyed while 6,757 were partially damaged. He added that 678 cattle were also killed in the flood.

SINDH

Sindh has been put on red alert and there are fears that up to 150,000 people could be displaced in the province, an official said.

The Sukkur district administration announced on Monday that they will be disconnecting gas and electricity supply in the area as a precautionary measure. DCO Sukkur Inamullah Dharejo has imposed Section 144 throughout the district and the Sukkur district administration, assisted by the Pakistan Army and the Sindh Rangers, has again requested residents of Katcha Bunder village to relocate to relief camps.

Residents, however, have been non-cooperative, pushing the Sukkur district administration to resort to pressure tactics, sources said, indicating that the suspension of gas and electricity connections is an attempt to force people to move.

DDO Revenue, Sukkur, Sumair Syed told The Express Tribune that the authorities wanted people to evacuate voluntarily for their own safety and that some villagers had started moving to relief camps. “If they refuse to move to the relief camps by tomorrow morning, then the administration will have to drive them out forcibly and shift to the camps,” he said. Agencies (With additional reporting by our correspondents in Peshawar and Lahore, and Sarfaraz Memon in Sukkur)

Published in The  Express Tribune, August 3^rd, 2010.