ENVIRONMENT-PAKISTAN: Relief for Flood Victims – Too Little, Too Late

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

DADU, Sindh, Jul 24 2007 (IPS) - ”Our stuff is already packed and we’re ready to evacuate,” said Allah Rakha,50, at a mobile medical camp set up on the Main Nara Valley (MNV) embankment which is, miraculously, still standing up to rainy weeather and pressure from flood waters.

Allah Rakha’s village, a short distance away, will soon be inundated as the embankments built along his village will give way anytime. He has come to talk to those already displaced to know “how they are coping and what lies ahead’’.

The camp has been set up in the sub-district of Khairpur Nathan Shah (KN Shah) by Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in the flood-affected areas of Dadu district in Sindh province, 400 km north of the southern port city of Karachi.

“Most people coming to us suffer from skin, gastrointestinal and respiratory infections,” said Dr Ghulam Ali, the TRDP camp supervisor. “Because of the scorching heat they keep going into the standing water causing skin rashes and boils. This is the water they use for both washing and drinking.” They had seen several hundreds of people “with the same kind of medical problem”.

“We are providing them with water purifying tablets,” added Kulsum Bibi, one of the lady health visitors accompanying the doctor. Nobody has stoves to boil water.

So far over 1,400 villages in Sindh have been completely inundated. More villages, especially in and around Dadu, are at risk as water continues to rise to perilous levels in the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD), a man-made drain that passes through the district into the Arabian Sea.

The pressure caused by the flow of flood water is causing breaches at various places and will prove to be hazardous to an estimated 200,000 in the sub-districts of Mehar and Johi of Dadu district. In addition, a surge of another 200,000 cusecs from Balochistan province into Manchhar Lake will prove dangerous for the thousands living around the lake. If water is not released into the Indus river, the waters may inundate the towns of Jamshoro, Sehwan, Bhan Saeedabad and Dadu.

According to official sources, the death toll stands at 302 with some 377,394 people rendered homeless by the Cyclone Yemyin that struck southwest Pakistan on Jun. 23. The worst-affected areas of the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh that were struck by the cyclone also happen to be the least developed in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority’s chairman Farooq Ahmad Khan said last week that 157 people were still missing and that the floods had directly affected over three million people in Balochistan and about 200,000 people in Sindh.

With large tracts of land, including irrigated areas, completely submerged in standing mosquito-infested water, the villagers have taken to higher ground, especially river embankments on which makeshift shelters comprising a charpai (rope beds) propped up with bamboo poles and draped over with plastic sheets.

More than month later, the government’s claim of doing all it can rings hollow. Even international donors have been slow with their pledges. “The government may have a humanitarian disaster of a colossal nature if it does not move in fast,” warned Lala Neel Amber, leader of the TRDP’s emergency unit. ‘’The window of opportunity is closing fast.

“For the past many weeks, the country seems to have been consumed by the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) crisis and all of the (government’s) attention was diverted towards Islamabad,” says Dr Sonu Khangarani, TRDP’s director, who also feels the spate of suicide bombings following the storming of the mosque may have kept many potential donors from venturing to the flood-affected region.

While the government’s lethargy is palpable, political parties and NGOs, usually the first to make all the right noises, are also conspicuous by their absence. Where they have reached, the pace has not been in keeping with the relief needed.

The United Nations launched its first appeal for funds worth 38 million US dollars on Jul.17, from Geneva, almost three weeks after the disaster first struck.

With time and human resources of NGOs diverted towards assessments of loss of property, livestock and shelter, finding partners, modalities pertaining to allocation of funds and showing the fund-raisers around, a vast number of flood affected wait for help and relief. “It’s quite true. The whole process takes time. But what can we do, we don’t have reserve funds for such emergencies, and we depend on international donors for that,” said Khangarani.

At a press conference, in Karachi, Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) provincial chief Syed Qaim Ali Shah, accused the government of “playing politics over the calamity”. He said the government authorities were telling the affected people that since the area came under exiled leader Benazir Bhutto’s constituency, it was PPP’s responsibility to provide relief.

”There is a feeling here that some breaches were deliberately made by the authorities to change the course of water from the lands of the more influential to save their standing crops, at the cost of ours,” said Arbab Ali, a villager.

Explained Neel Amber: “The government wants to divert the water to the desert area of the district to minimise damage to infrastructure. But in the process some 250 villages, in KN Shah and Johi will suffer.’’

Niaz Hussain and his family of seven have been living are among the 80,000 IDPs in Dadu facing food shortages and lack of shelter. He and his family have been braving the weather under an open sky now for two weeks.

“We have not received anything since we lost our home ten days ago,” said Hussain, as the crowd gathered and nodded in agreement. “We just depend on these villagers to provide us with an odd meal, but this can’t continue as they themselves are poor,’’ he said. “I desperately need food and bedding. The waters took us by surprise around midnight. We were able to save our lives but saw all our belongings swept away. In just one night I lost what took me a lifetime to build,” said Hussain.

“And I lost all my school books,” added his seven-year-old son Mithun, breaking the tragic silence that pervaded the medical tent.