NDMA to submit national contingency plan next week

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) will submit the finalised National Contingency Plan to the government next week. Informed sources told Business Recorder that the NDMA and all the four provinces had two meetings in June, 2012 to discuss the strategy to minimise loss during the upcoming monsoon.
"All the four provinces presented their 'Relocation Plan' and it was decided that till the second week of July this relocation plan would be finalised and would be submitted to the federal government titled 'National Contingency Plan'. After approval, this plan would be published and widely publicised, sources added.
"The NDMA has not received Rs 5 billion requested to the Ministry of Finance so far. Despite the fact that Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh promised to release the amount with immediate affect. This amount is required to make essential arrangements before the upcoming monsoon. The government's request to foreign donors for an amount of $440 million for the project to start work in flood-affected areas of Sindh and Balochistan could not have been successful as the country has received 10 percent of the total requested amount," sources disclosed.
They said that the areas feared to be most affected during the expected floods this year include Muzzaffargarh, Rajanpur,
Laiya, Sargodha, Charsada, Nowshera, Peshawar, Khushab, Muzzafarabad and Lower Sindh while land sliding is expected in Gilgit-Baltistan. "Those areas where rainfall is usually not very frequent are expected to experience downpour during the upcoming monsoon," sources revealed.
This year, the MET Office has warned of 5-15 percent more monsoon rains which will affect 2.9 million people across the country.
During a meeting on July 2, 2012, the government of Sindh, the most affected in the 2011 floods, assured Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf that the provincial government has made all the essential arrangements to minimise losses during the monsoons, which included repair of flood protective bunds, cleanness of channels, de-silting of water courses, sources added.
Crops have not been grown in some areas of Lower Sindh, for example District Badin due to stagnant rain water of 2011 monsoon. If the country faces floods again in 2012, then the overall agricultural productivity especially in Sindh would be badly hit, especially cotton crop would have to face a huge loss particularly in Lower Sindh and Southern Punjab while sugarcane and rice crops would not be adversely affected, sources said.
Due to shortage of water, the sowing of the cotton crop has already been affected across the country. Cotton crop can be sown on 9 million acres of land but this year due to shortage of water, the crop would be sown on no more than 3.2-3.4 million acres of land.