Flood fallout on education

Despite the passage of several months since the devastating floods which killed over 1,700 people and caused over $30 billion worth of damage while impacting about 35 million people, Pakistan is still learning of the true impact of the disaster. One of the impacted areas that cannot easily be given a dollar value is education. While the planning ministry has estimated it will take about Rs200 billion to repair and rehabilitate education infrastructure, the losses go beyond just buildings. According to Unicef, the floods destroyed over 26,000 schools, while 7,000-plus others have become unusable because they are being used as relief camps and temporary shelters for internally displaced people.

This has affected at least 3.5 million students, exacerbating an already-troubling situation regarding low enrolment nationwide. But problems are also being seen in areas where the schools are operational, because thousands of students have also dropped out and started working to help their families recover from the loss of their homes or their breadwinners. Many of these children are unlikely to return to school, even if given the chance. Meanwhile, several temporary schools lack even the most basic facilities, which was bad enough when the weather was warm, but could lead to a new health crisis as temperatures drop and kids are left to study in tents with no heating, electricity, or even access to clean water and proper bathrooms. Indeed, it will be near-impossible to operate tent schools without heating from mid-December and into February in several areas.

Recent reports are also littered with criticism of local and provincial authorities with regard to repair work. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, for example, while the provincial government did a decent job of setting up tent schools and arranging other temporary facilities, infrastructure repair has still not started in several areas, making getting to temporary or permanent facilities an arduous task. Meanwhile, several international NGOs which had provided critical lifelines are packing up — either due to the end of their work mandates, or lack of continuing funding, or diversion to other disaster areas around the world. While this was bound to happen at some point, local authorities seemed wholly unprepared to take over from the NGOs or even pick up some slack. Some experts have also voiced concern over the ability of both federal and provincial governments to absorb any additional financial burden amid the precarious economic situation.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2022.

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