British plane carrying relief goods arrives
The relief goods included 46,018 water containers, 818 shelter kits, 12,525 blankets and 4,510 sets of basic kitchen utensils. According to the British High Commission, the aid was given directly to Save the Children organisation and will be distributed in the worst flood affected areas of the country.
On Monday, a flight carrying water purification units, 34 million purification tablets and 18,000 buckets had landed in Karachi while another flight carrying water containers and 2,198 shelter kits is expected to land in Karachi on Friday.
UK International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said in a press statement that the UK will intensify efforts this week in the critically affected southern areas of the country to help avert the risk of a public health crisis, including providing urgently needed clean drinking water and sanitation for hundreds of thousands of people.
He said the UK will start emergency production lines in factories in Lahore and Karachi, to produce 2,155 hygiene kits per day and 5,300 water containers per day for two weeks. Trucks will leave the factories as soon as they are full to distribute the urgently needed items to people in Punjab and Sindh to help stop the spread of water-borne diseases.
The UK will also help set up an emergency field operations and coordination base camp in the flood-battered areas near Sukkur to house up to 72 relief workers from a range of agencies.
Britain has committed £64 million to help the flood victims while the British public has donated a further £47 million to the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2010.
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