Hanging by a tether in Gilgit-Baltistan

Recent torrential rains have affected over 20,000 people in seven districts of the region.


Noor Muhammad August 12, 2010

A series of natural disasters has crippled life in most of Gilgit–Baltistan. Recent torrential rains have affected over 20,000 people in seven districts of the region. Around 80 lives have been lost in flood-related hazards, while critical infrastructure, including the Karakoram Highway, has been badly damaged. The worst hit village in the region is Qamra where around 42 people lost their lives and many were missing after it was hit by a flash flood on August 7.

The Karakoram Highway has been blocked and bridges in the Kohistan and Hazara regions of Khyber–Pakhtunkhwa province destroyed. Scarcity of essential items due to the blockade of access routes has emerged as a major problem. Government and relief agencies are facing problems in transporting relief goods to affected areas while prices in local markets have skyrocketed making goods unaffordable for many. Supply of clean drinking water has been disrupted and the spread of waterborne diseases is becoming an eminent threat due to the absence of proper health facilities.

The top priority of the government and the NGOs should be to transport relief items to the disaster hit areas and to restore the Karakoram Highway immediately, as well as inter-district and inter-village link roads. Provision of health and hygiene facilities is another area of major importance and education of displaced children will also have to be planned for.

The government needs to come up with a proper rehabilitation plan. Special attention is required to support families who have lost all means of livelihood, which is going to cause poverty to sharply increase in the coming months. National and international organisations will have to intervene and create safety nets for these vulnerable families. It is pertinent to note that Hunza–Nagar and Gilgit districts were already suffering as a result of the Attabad landslide of January 4.

It is unfortunate that natural disasters routinely play havoc with precious lives, throwing thousands of families below the poverty line in a fraction of seconds. Logic dictates that investment in preparedness is far easier and beneficial than compensation. The risk of such disasters can be significantly reduced by helping communities plan safer settlements. In Gilgit city, for instance, most of the houses destroyed were reportedly constructed in the path of the river’s flow. Several houses that were washed away were constructed in highly vulnerable locations because of lack of expert knowledge. It is not irrational to expect that the number of people killed and displaced could have been significantly lower if they had taken extra care while building their settlements.

The government, NGOs and local communities need to join hands and work together to ensure that risks are reduced and further damage prevented. Preventing destruction, rather than curing it after it has happened, is the golden rule even today.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13th, 2010.

COMMENTS (2)

Mamtaz Hussain Gohar | 13 years ago | Reply Really nice to see you here exp. Tribune Nur Bahi, well done best of luck.
salman jafri | 13 years ago | Reply when u see the houses it was more likely to be wash away the pakistan should build pre fabricated houses - easy to build and should be along the lines of those in ajk. Quick and easy to build homes which are ready to be reconstructed quickly - there should be industry for pre fabricated housing which matches to ajk housing standards now. In future pakistan army set up camps for floods specifically wherever they are refugees from floods and get stuff to them quickly by helicopters and a beacon type thing to glow in the night - drop off stuff in night for 24 hour relief effort for them. so the army already have the kashmir effort as what have for people who are in a disaster all they have to do adapt it for water floods and help people where they are. Expand the size of river in gilgit and make sure it flows into a dam and that dam has a mechanism to release water and expand the rivers below as that will slow speed of the water - if you narrow the river - the speed will increase. You needs dams all the down that river to stop a repeat of this sort of situation. But best option is dams are best quickly a multiple of dams to stop a flood like this and it will generate electricity even if you dont widen the river to slow down speed of the water in a flood. the speed will help massive generation of electricity as it kinetic energy of the water which power the hydro dams without water having to be released to generator power. If you think about you can generate power from the water coming gilgit without dams and then you put in dams you can stop floods. serious thinking must going new dams in pakistan from gilgit, nwfp, punjab, Balochistan and sindh.
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