An international aid agency Oxfam on Thursday warned that the fresh flood could cause more devastation in Pakistan if a disaster reduction mechanism was not implemented, calling on the government to urgently invest a minimum of two percent of its district budgets in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).
"The effects of fresh flooding in southern Pakistan may have been prevented if effective DRR mechanisms were installed in the flood prone areas after the lessons learnt from the mega floods of 2010," Oxfam observed on International Humanitarian Day. Failure to develop and implement effective DRR measures would keep crippling Pakistan's economy and its people, it said, adding the new flooding has put an additional stress on the government's limited resources at a time when even a year after the 2010 mega floods, many reconstruction and rehabilitation needs are still unmet, including the repair of embankments.
This particularly has put the flood prone areas further at risk as the monsoon rains are intensifying. Fresh flooding has increased the number of those in need of shelter assistance making 60,000 people homeless together with the 800,000 people who are still without proper homes after the devastating floods of 2010, it further said.
"Humanitarian assistance provides valuable and life-saving assistance to those in need during crises. However, it is the communities that face and cope with the first wave of disaster themselves before the government and aid workers can start their rescue and relief operations. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that communities are better prepared for disasters so that they are less reliant on outside assistance and can help themselves by mitigating losses at an early stage of disaster," said Neva Khan, Head of Oxfam in Pakistan.
It is an appalling fact that Pakistan has suffered 67 floods, of differing severity and numerous other natural disasters in 64 years of its independence. "It is more than one flood per year," Neva said. "It is unfortunate that despite being a disaster-prone country people still continue to suffer year after year, and absence of effective DRR measures is the main reason," she said, adding while disasters are likely to increase due to climate change, the government has a chance to make the state more resilient by ensuring that opportunities to embed disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation principles in the recovery and reconstruction activities are not being missed.
According to UN estimates two to five million people are likely to be affected by floods during this year's monsoon season. According to official figures nearly a million people in Southern Pakistan have already been affected in just ten days. This is an extremely worrying trend and ignoring the need for DRR puts an immense pressure on the government and humanitarian community in Pakistan, Oxfam said.
"Our hearts go out to the flood hit people who have lost their homes, their belongings, their loved ones and are still braving on," said Neva. As the flooding proceeds local and international humanitarian community prepares to support the government if the need arises.