Floods affect 4 million people, kill 132: NDMA Chairman
570 viewsBy jazbablog - Mon Sep 05, 8:51 pm
ISLAMABAD: NDMA Chairman Zafar Iqbal Qadir has said that recent floods in Sindh have affected over 4 million people while 132 people lost lives as per a rough estimate.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) chairman, who had returned from the flood hit areas two days earlier, was addressing a press conference on fresh situation in the flood-affected areas here on Monday in Press Information Department.
The current floods are substantial in terms of disastrous effects as far as losses in lives and properties are concerned though the total damages are less than the sufferings occurred last year.
“Besides loss of lives, the floods damaged 690,000 houses, over 10,000 cattle are missing, 4 million acre area and crops over 1.7 million acre land have been damaged,” he said.
He informed that response of the federal government was prompt to the situation as shortly after floods started; the prime minister visited the affected areas on August 15 and ordered that the provincial government should fully be supported.
The NDMA took immediate steps for the relief of the people in the affected areas and 1,400 camps were established in various areas for the affectees, 6 lacs rashion bags, 15,000 tents, 40,000 mosquito nets were provided to the provincial officials, Qadir said. The chairman said that the federal government have also purchased production of tents for the next 20 days and further supply would be launched from Tuesday (today), 8.5 million aqua tab and 1 million of sanitation tab besides other medicines were also provided.
As shortage of supplies was feared so private winders were also engaged along with USC and CSD, he further said. Qadir said, “We expect that soon 50,000 bags of rashion on daily basis would be supplied to the affected areas.
He said that the floods has affected left bank of Indus which is an irrigated area and therefore loss in agriculture is high as 80 percent of cash crops were destroyed by it.
To a question, he said that in terms of cash the government has spent Rs 1.5 billion in relief activities so far. The grant for disasters with the federal government are about Rs. 7 billion and as per estimate this is sufficient amount for relief activities, however, Pakistan may needs foreign assistance for rehabilitation and reconstruction as well as revival of agriculture sector in future, he maintained.
To another question, he said that in August above normal level rain occurred that caused devastation and after eid it is continuously raining in the already affected areas and other parts of Sindh. After stoppage in the rain two teams would be launched in the affected areas that are technical team to asses as what were the human factors that caused destruction and another team would asses the real damages accurately, the NDMA Chairman concluded.
