Relief efforts in flood-ravaged Pakistan are being stretched by the “unprecedented scale” of the disaster, with the flow of international aid almost at a standstill, the UN said yesterday.
A month of catastrophic flooding has now killed 1,760 people and affected more than 18 million, including 8 million who are dependent on aid handouts to survive, it said.
Although the initially slow pace of aid had improved since a visit by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the middle of last month, the UN said it has “almost stalled” since the beginning of last week, rising from US$274 million dollars to US$291 million dollars — about two thirds of funding needs.
“Given the number of those in need, this is a humanitarian operation of unprecedented scale,” Manuel Bessler, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement. “We need to reach at least 8 million people, from the Karakoram Mountain Range in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south.”
Thousands of people were trapped by floodwaters in towns in the southern province of Sindh, while others were complaining of going without food or water for days, some forced to live in the rubble of their ruined homes.
The World Bank raised its emergency funding for Pakistan to US$1 billion amid dire warnings about the threat to the country’s food supplies.
The floods have ruined 3.6 million hectares of rich farmland and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said farmers urgently needed seeds to plant for next year’s crops.
“Unless people get seeds over the next few weeks, they will not be able to plant wheat for a year,” said Daniele Donati, director for FAO emergency operations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. “Food aid alone will not be enough. If the next wheat crop is not salvaged, the food security of millions will be at risk.”
In southern Pakistan, hundreds of hungry and desperate families from a relief camp in the city of Thatta blocked the highway to Karachi for three hours on Wednesday, demanding the government provide more food and shelter.
“No food or water has been provided to us for the past two days,” said Mohammad Qasim, a 60-year-old resident of the flooded town of Sujawal.
The protest came as under-fire Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani warned the country faced inflation of up to 20 percent and slower economic growth because of the floods, warning of job losses and social unrest.
Gilani said an inflation target of 9.5 percent for next year would now likely be in the range of 15 percent to 20 percent, spurred by food shortages, while GDP growth would also slide to 2.5 percent from the predicted 4.5 percent.
Floodwaters moving south through Sindh Province on their way to the Arabian Sea entered the town of Jati and threatened nearby Choohar Jamoli town on the east bank of the swollen Indus.
Several thousand people were trapped in the two towns, city official Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro said, and power cuts were hindering rescue efforts.
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