Literally in troubled waters

Speaking at a flood victims' camp in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday, Prime Minister Gilani underlined the scale of the disaster caused by the unprecedented floods. According to him, the country was literally in troubled waters as the floods had made an irreparable dent on the national economy and infrastructure.
The disaster had broken the back of the agriculture and livestock sector, while damage to the infrastructure was yet to be assessed. He said that every eighth citizen of the country had been affected by the floods. He called upon the international community to come up with more financial assistance to meet the challenge. International financial institutions agree with the assessment. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has conceded that serious damage to the country's infrastructure is bleeding the economy.
According to him, it has severely impacted the country's economic outlook, and resulted in a worsening of the fiscal situation. The World Bank, too, agrees with the assessment. Promises have been made by both institutions to extend financial help to Pakistan. World Bank President Robert B Zoellick told Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh, on Wednesday, that the bank would raise its flood-related support in the current fiscal year to $1 billion from $900 million. On Thursday, the IMF announced that it would provide over $450 million in new emergency financing to Pakistan to help it cope with the economic impact of the floods.
For Pakistan it is of vital importance to seek international financial support. Equally important is that the aid is delivered at the earliest to enable Islamabad to undertake the badly needed rehabilitation and reconstruction activity. While some might consider that the government plans are over-ambitious, they are the least needed to provide relief to the flood-affected population and revive the badly hit economy. Islamabad awaits the damage-need assessment survey, which is to be carried out with help from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
One expects the exercise to be completed at the earliest, while realising the difficulties posed by the sheer vastness of the area affected, which is spread over from the Chinese border with Pakistan in Gilgit-Baltistan to the Indian Ocean. There are reports regarding the federal government finalising a financial relief package for the flood-affected people amounting to over Rs 250 billion.
The government will provide Rs 100,000 each to some 2.5 million households after the completion of the task, while it will also continue to provide financial assistance equal to $100 per family for the next six months to help them buy food before the next harvests. It also has plans to provide seed and fertiliser to farmers to enable them to plant their crops. The task of rebuilding and repairing damaged houses in all four provinces would be carried out simultaneously to complete the whole reconstruction phase before the onset of winter.
In this regard, a proposal is under consideration to provide Rs 50,000 to each affected family for reconstruction of damaged houses. The reconstruction of infrastructure, including roads, bridges, barrages and public property would be an important part of the package.
What stands in the way are three things, the tardiness in the supply of aid, high expenses on aid delivery through international NGOs and the skewed priorities of the donors. The UN emergency response appeal launched last month has so far managed to garner only 63 percent of the funds the world body is seeking.
Although the initially slow pace of the aid had improved since a visit by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in mid-August, the UN said it had "almost stalled" since the beginning of last week, rising from $274 million to $291 million - about two-thirds of the funding needed. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani remarked last week that international NGOs spent a large share of the funds on overheads, which also include claims by UN agencies for 'headquarters charges.'
This indicates that the aid which eventually reaches the flood victims is actually much lower than the figures announced. The requirement for funds meanwhile is bound to go up with the UN appeal for revising the aid estimates upwards because the donors have discovered that the needs of the flood victims are more than estimated earlier and because the timeframe for UN activities has been extended from three months to 12 months.
The skewed priorities are reflected in the fact that the projects related to 'communications', 'advocacy' and 'protection' have received much higher funding than requested, while critical life-saving needs remain unmet. The three 'best-funded projects', it is maintained by aid analysts, are the UNHCR's protection project (478 percent financed), International Organisation of Migration's (IOM) mass communications project for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan (438 percent covered) and OCHA's co-ordination and advocacy project (272 percent sponsored). Conversely, water and sanitation activities are only funded 27 percent, leaving millions without clean water.
Reproductive health is only funded 12 percent, leaving hundreds of thousands of women without the prospect of a safe delivery. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said, on Wednesday, its appeal for $6 million for the health and safety of mothers and their babies got only a 20 percent response. The delay in aid is meanwhile causing desperation among the flood victims.
What is needed on the part of the government is to call the promised meeting of the CCI and decide the priorities. It should also take on board the various individuals and organisations collecting relief funds. While the foreign donors put their act together, the government should start the rehabilitation and reconstruction activity with whatever funds are available from its own budget and the donors inside the country.