Challenges of winter

Aid workers say donations have been thin on the ground at the local level in contrast to last year.

As the first winds of winter begin to blow across flood-hit Sindh, international humanitarian agencies have warned there is a desperate need for more resources to meet the needs of the millions of people who remain without adequate shelter or other means of protection. Some, according to media reports, are still living under nothing more than thin plastic sheets. The International Organisation for Migration, which is leading the effort to provide at least some kind of shelter to flood victims, says the situation will worsen rapidly if more assistance does not come in.

We have then a situation where millions of people in all 23 districts of Sindh and some in neighbouring areas of Balochistan may be forced to spend months without housing. Some, of course, have been hit for the second time, given they were also affected by the 2010 floods. The key issue is that the appeal made by the UN some months ago now for $357 million to meet the needs of flood victims has not been met. Only a tiny proportion of that amount has trickled in. At the same time, aid workers also say donations have been thin on the ground at the local level in contrast to last year. The National Disaster Management Authority meanwhile speaks of tens of thousands of houses which have been completely destroyed and acre after acre of crop washed away.

The advent of winter also brings with it the threat of more disease as winds from the north are known to cause respiratory tract infections, with children and the elderly most at risk. Also, though the province is in the country’s south, most of its interior districts, which is where the bulk of the affectees are, apart from Badin district by the coast, do experience a winter that would be cold enough for anyone without adequate shelter. The plight of the flood victims has been ignored by far too many of us already. If this situation continues, without greater effort made by the government and other authorities to step in, we could see the disaster that already exists growing even more grim. This is something we need to avoid at all costs by putting in a collective effort.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st,  2011.