The UN rushed a top envoy to Pakistan yesterday to address the urgent plight of 3.2 million people hit by the worst floods in generations as officials warned the crisis was spreading.
As the humanitarian disaster pushed into a second week, fears are growing of a food crisis among survivors who saw their villages and farmland washed away, killing more than 1,500 people in northwest and central Pakistan.
Victims have increasingly lashed out against Pakistan’s government for not providing better relief, piling pressure on a cash-strapped administration straining to contain Taliban violence and economic crisis.
PHOTO: AFP
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon dispatched special envoy Jean-Maurice Ripert to help mobilize international support and address victims’ “urgent, immediate needs,” a spokesman said.
Facing protests from desperate survivors clamoring for help, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday ordered government officials to speed up relief work and said ministers would each donate one month’s salary.
Ripert, former French ambassador to the UN, arrived in Pakistan yesterday and was to visit affected areas in the northwest and meet government officials.
The record rains triggered floods and landslides last week that devastated villages and farmland in some of the country’s poorest and most volatile regions in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and central Punjab provinces.
“We see urgent need of food assistance to people affected by floods to prevent a starvation-like situation,” said Amjad Jamal, spokesman for the UN World Food Programme. “Eighty percent of food reserves have been destroyed by the floods, which also caused massive damage to livestock, markets, roads and overall infrastructure.”
“The flood water is increasing at different points and we are expecting more rain in next 24 hours,” Hazrat Mir, chief meteorologist for Punjab, told reporters. “This is an alarming situation.”
Survivors complain they have been abandoned by the government, organizing protests in the northwestern city of Peshawar and on Wednesday blocking the motorway to Islamabad for 1.5 hours.
Particular scorn has been reserved for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who is deeply unpopular, for pressing ahead with visits to Paris and London at the height of the disaster, saying in a five-star hotel while his people suffer.
Although Gilani has said about 100,000 people have been rescued and “relief items in sufficient quantity” provided to provinces, many people say they have received no assistance from the government, only from local families.
The UN said clean drinking water and sanitation were urgently needed to stop disease spreading among survivors.
An international relief campaign has included a promise of a US$10 million aid package from the US, while the UN will disburse up to the same amount from an emergency response fund.
The British government pledged US$8 million in aid, while Australia pledged US$4.4 million and China US$1.5 million. Other countries including Indonesia, South Korea and Canada have also promised help.
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
Outside Havana, a combine belonging to a private Vietnamese company is harvesting rice, directly farming Cuban land — in a first — to help address acute food shortages in the country. The Cuban government has granted Agri VAM, a subsidiary of Vietnam’s Fujinuco Group, 1,000 hectares of arable land in Los Palacios, 118km west of the capital. Vietnam has advised Cuba on rice cultivation in the past, but this is the first time a private firm has done the farming itself. The government approved the move after a 52 percent plunge in overall agricultural production between 2018 and 2023, according to data
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
RSS