Fight to save Pakistan city from flooding

KARACHI: Authorities in Pakistan were battling yesterday to save a city in the flood-devastated southern province of Sindh after a mass evacuation as floodwaters threatened to wreak further havoc.

IN DESPERATE NEED OF AID: A flood-affected woman holds her diarrhoea-suffering child at a medical centre in Muzaffargarh in Punjab. UN agencies stepped up calls for donors to deliver on their pledges for Pakistan to prevent what Ban called a ‘slow-motion tsunami’ from wreaking further catastrophe. — AFP photo

The near month-long floods have killed 1,500 people and affected up to 20 million nationwide in the country’s worst natural disaster, with the threat of disease ever-present in the miserable camps sheltering penniless survivors.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from flood-threatened areas in the south on Sunday, including from Shahdadkot, with most of the city’s 100,000 residents escorted to safety or making a getaway by whatever means possible.

“We are right now trying to protect Shahdadkot … which is threatened by the rising floodwaters,” Sindh provincial irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo told AFP.

He said an embankment built to protect the city was under pressure from the waters and “we are trying to save the city from the unprecedented flood”.

“But there are still some people stranded in these villages (around Shahdadkot) and we are making efforts to rescue them,” he said.

Dharejo, however, stressed there was no threat to Hyderabad, the second-largest city in Sindh and Pakistan’s sixth biggest overall with a population of 2.5 million.

Pakistan’s weak civilian government has faced an outpouring of fury over sluggish relief efforts, while officials warn the country faces ruinous economic losses of up to US$43 billion.

Millions of survivors are in desperate need of food, shelter and clean drinking water and require humanitarian assistance to survive, as concerns grow over potential cholera, typhoid and hepatitis outbreaks.

Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Islamabad, told AFP yesterday that 1.5 million people were being treated for everything from respiratory and skin infections to diarrhoea.

The International Monetary fund is expected to begin talks with Pakistani officials yesterday on restructuring a US$10 billion loan.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday praised the global community as emergency donations for Pakistan neared US$500 million, but warned the country faces ‘years of need’.

The United States, has given the most, followed by Saudi Arabia and Britain.

However, Louis-Georges Arsenault, head of emergency operations for Unicef, the UN children’s fund, said the international community could do far more.

“One of the major challenges we have, which is quite extraordinary, is the lack of level of support from the international community right now,” Arsenault told the BBC. — AFP