Floods and governance

The massive floods across the length of Pakistan have exposed yet another aspect of deteriorating governance.

The massive floods across the length and breadth of Pakistan have exposed yet another aspect of deteriorating governance. In the aftermath of the earthquake of 2005, attempts were made to put in place an integrated disaster management system to provide an effective response to natural as well as man-made disasters. The earthquake had caught us completely unprepared. Floods, in contrast, are predictable and the country has a history of dealing with this calamity. However, the system was not in evidence long after the severest flood of the century began to hit northern Pakistan, an area which has already witnessed 2.8 million people displaced after the earthquake and another three million as a result of the insurgency in Swat.

In most cases, the institutions present in the immediate vicinity – the district administration and the military – in the absence of early enough warnings, found themselves drawn into rescue and relief operations without adequate preparation. Mobilisation of boats, helicopters and supply of food and water had to be planned instantly. The provincial governments took some time in realising the scale of the tragedy and all they did was to shout the federal government out of its slumber and demand additional resources, which the latter does not have after the operationalisation of the seventh National Finance Commission (NFC).

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been a disaster itself. Management of floods in the past had been the responsibility of the Federal Flood Commission and irrigation and other relevant provincial departments. These institutions waited for the NDMA and its provincial counterparts to take the lead, remembering the lessons hammered into their ears in the donor-funded workshops and seminars following the setting up of the NDMA. When the occasion arose, everyone was on their own. There was no trace of an integrated framework to deal with disasters.

A six-point plan was made for 2005-10. It consisted of flood zoning and appropriate land use, periodic updating of the flood manual, review of reservoir operational rules for efficient flood control without risking the structures of dams and embankments, better forecasts and flood warning systems, additional flood protection facilities and proper maintenance of existing facilities, and changes in the design and maintenance of present structures to achieve functional capability and reliability. Physical targets were fixed for 453 embankments and 150 spurs. The Asian Development Bank (ADB)-assisted Second Flood Protection Sector Project was to be completed at a cost of Rs3.7 billion, an outlay of Rs2.8 billion was envisaged for emergent flood schemes, Rs300 million would be spent on flood forecasting and meteorological system improvements and a further Rs291 million on a flood forecasting system for Nullah Lai. All told, the federal government planned to spend Rs7 billion on flood control and protection. The provincial outlay would be in addition to that. A mid-term evaluation pronounced satisfactory achievement of physical targets and an expenditure of Rs3.8 billion until 2007-08. Since then, the expenditure has been less than a billion per annum. Thus a fairly decent plan, which was under-funded from the very beginning, did not even receive what was envisaged. The utilisation also deviated from the outcomes envisaged, as the NDMA confused matters on disaster management and its ownership.

As a result of ineffective governance in the flood sector, we are back to donor-assisted damage assessments and perhaps the launch of the ADB-assisted Third Flood Protection Sector Project, with the addition that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is demanding a 95 per cent share. The earlier project, let’s not forget, was declared sick by the donor.

Published in The Express Tribune, August  13^th, 2010.