Saudi Arabia pledges $100m for flood victims

Saudi Arabia will donate $100 million to help flood-st­ricken Pakistanis, the kingdom’s ambassador said.

Saudi Arabia will donate $100 million to help flood-stricken Pakistanis, the kingdom’s ambassador in Pakistan said on Sunday.

Ambassador Abdul Aziz bin Ibrahim bin Salih Al-Ghadeer said this while talking to The Express Tribune at a dinner hosted by the Saudi embassy.

The ambassador said that King Abdullah was taking a personal interest in extending relief assistance to the flood-affected people of Pakistan. He also said that more relief consignments will follow the $100 million donation. Also, during the past few days the US has been rushing humanitarian assistance to Pakistanis who are in an urgent need of food, shelter and medical supplies.

According to the US embassy in Islamabad, it is drawing on funds from the $35 million provided by the US government. It has also deployed additional personnel to work with national and provincial disaster management officials.

The US has provided an additional $2 million to the International Organisation for Migration to assist as many as 70,000 people in Khyber-Pakthunkhwa and Balochistan, while the United Nation Children’s Fund has received an additional amount of $3 million for their programmes that are aimed at preventing waterborne diseases countrywide.

Another $2 million has been provided to the UN World Health Organisation to support local health facilities and expand communicable disease surveillance known as the Disease Early Warning System.

The British public too has donated four million pounds towards helping the relief effort for the 12 million flood victims in the country. Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 humanitarian aid agencies, described the response to a TV appeal aired less than 48 hours ago as ‘fantastic’.

Chief executive DEC, Brendan Gormley has said despite the tough economic times, the British public has been extremely generous. A Royal Air Force C17 aircraft based at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire has been deployed to fly 500 tents from Dubai to the flood-hit areas. The tents have been flown to Islamabad, from where they will be driven to the Peshawar region.  (With additional input from NEWS DESK)

Published in The  Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2010.