Seminar: Reaching out to the flood-affected in Sindh

ISLAMABAD:

Millions of lives are at stake in Sindh due to the lack of attention being given to flood-ravaged people. This was stated by World Food Program (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Ramiro Lopes da Silva. He was speaking at a seminar on the flood situation in Sindh, held here on Monday. While responding to a question on the limited response of UN agencies and donors, he said that there should be an independent assessment report regarding the devastation to convince donors at home and abroad.

There is a need to mobilise national and international public opinion to stress on politicians to extend due response to the crisis. Floods in back-to-back years have also ruined crops in Sindh, he said. Social mobilisation backed by the media is the best way to create awareness about the miseries of the affected people. He urged the government of Pakistan to own the crisis and engage the international community towards millions of affected people in Sindh, he said.

At present, there is no visibility of mobilisation of resources and emergency relief work in the flood-ravaged areas, he said.  The WFP, he said, has exceeded its target of providing life-saving food assistance to 500,000 floods-affected people in Sindh by the end of September. Damage to roads, bridges, and infrastructure in affected areas continues to challenge the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Moreover, WFP has provided almost 8,800 metric tons of monthly family food rations to nearly 608,000 people in six districts of Sindh since distribution started on September 12. The six priority districts are Badin, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Tharparkar, Nawabshah and Umerkot.

“WFP plans to scale up deliveries in October to cover 2.25 million people across Sindh and Balochistan over the next four months,” he said. In preparation for a scale-up, WFP is in the process of contracting additional cooperating partners.

He said that in light of the recent National Nutritional Survey that highlights alarming levels of malnutrition in Sindh, the WFP has provided one month’s rations and supplementary food to address the expected nutritional decline amongst these vulnerable groups. A joint initial assessment has been conducted in 11 flood-affected districts of Balochistan, he said. “Preliminary data suggests that food is the most urgent need,” he said, adding that food stocks have been destroyed and access to local markets has been severely hampered.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2011.