By: Saadia Bakhtawar

 

 

Last year’s floods in Pakistan brought massive devastation. The scope and scale of the crisis which emerged during and mostly after the floods was unexceptional. It affected the lives of more than half the population of the country, washing away communities, societies, villages and forcing millions to leave their houses and take refuge in different camps. Despite the crisis, people of Pakistan showed enormous courage and strength throughout the disaster, supporting each other to overcome the extraordinary adversity.

The people had not yet fully recovered with the last year’s crisis that floods due to monsoon rains were back yet again this year; 2011 that is, destroying almost everything people had hopes from. The affected areas primarily include the southern province of Sindh and over twenty districts in Baluchistan. Badin is the worst affected district in Sindh, with over 6000 villages under water. Other calamity-hit areas include Benazirabad, Mirpurkhas, Tando Muhammad Khan, Tando Allahyar and Khairpur.

The scale of the disaster was not only magnificent – cutting off many villages and making them inaccessible to government and relief workers – with that the aid response was much less than  last year, which has further added on to people’s misery, exponentially. According to the official records, more than 5.5 million people so far have been affected, about 1.2 million homes have been washed away and around 1.5 million acres of cropland have been damaged.

In order to help in such a calamity, once again, military was called in to carry out a flood relief operation. Military officials with the help of boats helped affected people move from their respective areas to the flood relief camps. According to an unofficial data, the Sindh government claims to have put an estimated of 280,000 affected people in nearly 2,000 refugee camps. However, all over Sindh, some 2,250 emergency relief camps have already been set up for the homeless where cooked food and other necessities have been provided to the affected people.

Apart from the provincial government, federal government also took measures to help out in the flood relief work. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, in order to increase the efficiency of the flood relief work formed a Flood Relief Committee to coordinate all relief efforts. The committee included: the chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA); the cabinet secretary and the personal secretary to the prime minister as well as several members of Parliament.

Other than that, Pakistan’s government has also appealed foreign countries to help out Pakistan in such a calamity. However, many have not come forward to help out Pakistan this time; as they did last year which itself has allowed many questions to emerge in accordance to define the efficiency of the current government. Moreover, many non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) have also played their role in helping out the affected people.

The impact of floods is not just limited to an increase in the death calamities. More than two million people are suffering from Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD) with other water-borne and vector-borne diseases which further are an indication towards a major health risk in flood affected areas. With that, the common causes of morbidity and mortality are diarrheal diseases including cholera, which affects many of pregnant women and children under five.

Despite, all the flood relief activities, people still have not been able to get back to their normal lives which somehow have brought in many questions in people’s mind both locally and internationally. Therefore, not only the government but also civil society needs to work together in order to help out the countrymen through all means. The role of the government is not only to help out the affected after the calamity but also to take preventive measures much before so that such calamities don’t repeat in the near future.