Humanitarian coordination mechanism dealt by the government and UN OCHA at the federal provincial and district level has been failed in developing comprehensive planning to respond the disaster situation effectively by mobilising humanitarian funding as there is 52 percent gap in mobilising the humanitarian funding for emergency relief services of rain affected people of the Sindh.
This has been disclosed in Civil Society Flood Situation Report issued by Peoples Accountability Commission on Floods (PACF), a network of flood affected communities, their representatives, volunteers and civil society activists working for the relief and recovery of the flood affected communities in Sindh. The report titled 'Critical humanitarian funding Situation and early recovery framework caseload' was released on Thursday.
According to the report 356,759,669 dollars were required for emergency relief but 170,656,780 dollars were funded due to the initial decline and delay of more than one month in launching appeal for emergency assistance by Government of Pakistan.
According to the report, it is the matter of grave concern that government and humanitarian coordination failed to mobilise or allocate funds for the early recovery projects for rain affected peoples to be initiated in the month of the January 2012 but yet zero funding has been mobilised against the two months delayed lunching of revised appeal of 215 projects and 440 million dollars for 9.2 million rain affected population in Sindh.
Discussing the affected situation and targeted interventions for recovery and rehabilitation process, the report said that presently 352,000 families were food insecure particularly children under five and pregnant/lactating women whereas 43,187 families headed by females were in severe food insecure situation. In health sector 9,275,568 peoples and 2,279,564 families are in dire need of the health assistance. With regard to shelter cluster feedback 305,827 families in Sindh have observed their houses fully or partially damaged and are in unavoidable need to rebuild or repair of their shelters. In wash sector 2,240,000 persons in Sindh are facing issues and problems due to the collapses of the wash facilities. Community restoration cluster has targeted 1,020,242 persons in Sindh for safe and resilient recovery of livelihoods of the affected population through restoration of community basic infrastructure.
In education sector 388,509 children are in dire need of intervention with need of the rehabilitation of the 4,810 partially and fully damaged schools in Sindh. With regard to feedback from nutrition cluster 423,768 children and 75,344 pregnant and lactating women are in need of the provision for lifesaving nutrition services, and with regard to protection cluster 1,459,000 affected population and 133,000 disable persons are in need of improved safety and security particularly children, women and persons with disabilities.
The report showed suspicion over the seriousness of the government to mobilise or allocate humanitarian funding and to meet the targets before the expected coming monsoon. According to the report, civil society members are supervised to know that on one hand NDMA Cairman Zafar Iqbal Qadir quoted rain flood unprecedented while on other hand unprecedented efforts were not taken to minimise the catastrophe caused by the rain flood 2011.
It was beyond the logic that initially in the month of August the government of Pakistan declined to appeal for the emergency relief assistance for rain affected peoples and consequently launched appeal to the international community on September 18, 2011 for assistance. Civil society situation report termed delayed appeal as cause of lees intervention and unmet needs in education, temporary shelter, food security and health sector.-PR