‘Pakistan should invest 2% of district budget’

It is unfortunate that despite being a disaster-prone country, people still continue to suffer year after year: Oxfam.

ISLAMABAD:

Calling the damage from fresh flooding completely preventable, international aid agency Oxfam has called on Pakistan to urgently invest at least two per cent of its district budget on disaster risk reduction mechanisms.

Pakistan, according to Oxfam, has survived 67 floods and numerous other natural disasters in 64 years of its independence. “It is unfortunate that despite being a disaster-prone country, people still continue to suffer year after year, and absence of effective DRR measures is the main reason,” said Head of Oxfam in Pakistan Neva Khan. The aid agency further said that had Pakistan learnt from the experiences of last summer’s flash floods, the damage caused by fresh floods in Sindh could have been prevented.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2011.