Floods: Water drained from 70% flood affected areas, says CM advisor

Advisor to Sindh CM for Relief unhappy with NGOs, philanthropists for not playing their role as UN seeks more funds.

ISLAMABAD/ KARACHI: Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister for Relief Haleem Adil Sheikh has regretted that citizens and philanthropists have not played their due role in providing relief to the flood-hit people, saying that the government has served the flood-hit people but citizens have not shown an encouraging response.

Addressing a press conference at Karachi Press Club on Thursday, Sheikh said that flood caused by recent heavy monsoon rains affected five districts of Sindh; however, now rainwater has been drained out from 70 per cent area and only 30 per cent area is still under flood water.

He seemed unhappy with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which according to him waited for government’s appeal to them instead of launching relief programs on their own.

Pakistan’s recent torrential floods, triggered by heavy monsoon rains in different parts of the country, killed at least 412 people and injured 1,172 others besides affecting over 8.2 million more.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) revealed that 2.7 million children are among the affected flood victims and have been facing many challenges.

Funds needed for over one million flood victims

Over one million people in flood-affected areas of Pakistan are in urgent need of food and safe drinking water, the United Nations said Thursday as it called for funds to meet the situation.

"More funds are required to meet the critical needs in the areas affected by floods," UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky told the regular noon briefing.

Among them, the World Food Programme requires $25 million to continue and to extend food distributions to 700,000 people for two months, he said, citing the assessments by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the spokesman said, had allocated nearly $10 million for water, food, shelter and healthcare to 1.3 million people in the seven hardest-hit districts of Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh.

In 2010, Pakistan was hit by the worst floods in the last 80 years of history of the region. More than 2,000 people were killed, while estimates by international institutions said that the damage to infrastructure could be around $15 billion. The floods left 20 million survivors homeless and destroyed crops at over more than 7.9 million acres besides leaving 200,000 livestock dead.