Strategy to help rain-hit people: PPP ready to cooperate with all parties: Sharjeel

HYDERABAD: Sindh Minister for Information, Transport and Mass Transit and focal person for rain emergency in Hyderabad Sharjeel Inam Memon has said that the ongoing devastation of the current monsoon rains had affected the entire country.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, he said it was our message to all political parties that we are ready to sit together for the sake of the people. He said that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had directed the PPP workers to actively participate in rescue and relief operations in KPK and Punjab.

He said that millions of people were looking towards the government, political parties and media.

He said it was the need of hour that apart from political differences all political parties should work together for our people adding that we could do politics only when there are people and county intact.

He informed that next few days would be more difficult as floods were coming from the upper areas. He said that our effort was to rescue affected people first and then do their rehabilitation and added that there had not been such a disaster in the history.

He informed that 341 deaths had been reported during the rains while 1009 had been injured and 13623 cattle heads had been killed. He said that 444967 houses were partially and 287447 completely destroyed while standing crops on 2798895 acres had also been destroyed.

Besides this 648621 families had been affected by rains and floods and 1753308 people had been displaced while around 5 million people had been affected. He said that 2328-km of roads, 60 bridges, 32 shops and 6 mosques had also been destroyed.

He informed that 1766 flood relief camps had been established throughout Sindh and 485759 people were residing in the relief camps He informed that PDMA had provided 89815 tents, 30710 tarpaulins and distributed 35424 ration bags while NDMN had distributed 7443 tents, 8900 tarpaulins and 4780 ration bags to the rain-affected people so far.

He said that in the relief camps, the administration and philanthropists were giving cooked food to affected people. He appealed to philanthropists and NGOs to give ration or other relief goods wherever they want but it would be better to contact the administration first so that more and more affected people could be equally helped and in this regard they could contact the PDMA control room number 03355557362 and 02135381810.

He said that every affected family would be given Rs 25,000 under Benazir Income Support Programme, adding that they knew that there had been a lot of damage, but even this amount would help affected people. He said that millions of people had been affected and thousands of people were participating in relief activities.

He said that 85 percent of the areas of Hyderabad city have been cleared and drainage work was still going on, while 15 percent of the low-lying areas were inundated and the situation in Hyderabad (rural) was very bad.

To a question about some social media reports, he made it clear that none of their representative for the sake of saving his land has inundating. He said if anyone tried to flood the villages for saving his lands, action would be taken against him.

He said that Pakistan Army and Navy, where needed, were helping the civil administration while all the institutions were helping the people in this national tragedy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022