Flood-affected areas People await relief

28 Sep, 2012

Governments and humanitarian agencies have miserably failed in providing quick and adequate relief in the worst flood affected districts of Sindh and Balochistan resulting in increased post flood human losses as millions of flood affected people are homeless without any relief service and post flood diseases are taking lives of 15 to 20 flood affected people daily in both the provinces.
This has been disclosed in civil society flood situation report titled 'Flood 2012 Situation Analysis- Gaps and Issues' prepared Peoples Accountability Commission on Floods (PACF), the network of flood affected communities, their representatives and civil society activists. The report was released here on Thursday.
According to the report the governments and their specific agencies including NDMA, PDMAs and DDMs miserably failed in providing early warning about possible heavy rains and floods in Jacobabad and Kashmore districts of Sindh and Naseerabad and Jaffarabad districts of Balochistan resultantly the local communities were all of sudden caught up by the rains and floods and faced serious human and livelihood losses.
According to the report the scale of the disaster preparedness in those and other districts of Sindh and Balochistan was so low and so non serious that with the flashes of heavy rains in some districts even the local district administration and related government departments left their offices leaving the affected communities without relief or any support for four to five initial days.
According to PACF report despite warnings from different sources about heavy rains and floods, Sindh government miserably failed in releasing disaster preparedness and relief funds to the district governments timely. In the conclusion the report has recommended only 17 percent people have been camped against the displacement of 273,043 persons therefore those who are in open sky should be camped so that emerging health hazards can be overcome. Shelter, food and clean drinking water should be provided to the flood affected people in both Sindh and Balochistan on priority basis.-PR

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