Rain on the plain

It is the plains of Punjab which have felt the worst brunt of the most recent spell of rains, with dozens of villages in the Sialkot area submerged and some completely cut off. More rain is expected and across the country it has already created havoc, triggering flash floods in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and Balochistan, causing houses to collapse and leaving cities in chaos. Ninety-six people have been killed, 99 injured and nearly 90,000 affected according to official figures. International humanitarian agencies have been moving in to help. But with more rains forecast, there are fears things could worsen in many parts of the country, as water levels in rivers and drainage channels rise.

Of course, right now, we need to cope with the aftermath of the disaster, to offer shelter and relief to people and consider how best to deliver this. Right now, too many people are complaining of receiving too little help. In the longer run though, we also need to consider how to save people from such peril. Despite warnings, our state of disaster preparedness is not good, while we also need to think at a wider level about what the floods tell us. Like so much else, they are discriminatory, hitting the poor hardest, knocking over their feeble homes and destroying land used to eke out livelihoods. As a nation, we should be considering how to offer more security to these persons. Better conditions of life can enable them to better withstand disaster.

In the meanwhile, with the rains continuing to fall, the plans the National Disaster Management Authority has said it had worked out must be put in place. Help is desperately needed in parts of K-P, Punjab and other places. The district level authorities assigned to provide this must do so. We also need to see more national level involvement, so that we can do everything possible to avoid the kind of flood disaster we have seen in previous years, with villagers in Sindh still to recover. They must be saved from further havoc this year, as the monsoon season reaches its peak.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th, 2013.

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