Rina Kionka, the ambassador and head of European Union delegation to Pakistan, has expressed her satisfaction over the level of community resilience against natural disasters, assuring of all-out support in the efforts to scale it up.
During her day-long visit to Booni Town, the district headquarters of Upper Chitral on Saturday, she visited the mitigation projects and pre-fabricated homes for flood-affected families erected by the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) and met the groups of youth and women engaged in climate change adaptation efforts.
Accompanied by Nusrat Nasab, the CEO of AKAH, as well as the deputy commissioners of Lower and Upper Chitral districts, she addressed the community members and appreciated the efforts of AKAH for its well-tailored interventions before and after the natural disasters in this calamity-prone mountainous area.
She stressed the need for focusing on environment, water, and renewable energy, which had ecological correlation.
She was informed on the occasion that the AKAH was the first responder in all the events of natural disasters. It had trained 36,000 volunteers and one of its 170 community emergency response teams rushed to the spot within no time of occurrence.
She was also informed that the AKAH was the pioneer of community-based disaster risk management, which also maintained stockpiles at every union council level for immediate mobilisation to the nearest affected village.
During the floods in 2022 summer, it evacuated 8,000 calamity-hit people to safer places, provided food and shelter to 10,000 people, and helped 206 displaced families in its pre-fabricated houses in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 17th, 2023.
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