Asia

Asia

Flood aid slows to trickle

03 September 2010 01:03 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. 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, APA reports quoting The Australian.
A month of catastrophic flooding has killed 1760 people and affected more than 18 million, including eight million who are dependent on aid to survive.
Although the initially slow pace of aid had improved since a visit by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month, the UN said it had "almost stalled" since the beginning of last week, rising from $US274 million ($302m) to $US291m - about two-thirds of funding needs.
"This is a humanitarian operation of unprecedented scale," Manuel Bessler, head of the UN’s co-ordination agency OCHA said. "We need to reach at least eight 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 are 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 from $US900m to $US1 billion to help the nation cope with a disaster that has crippled its economy, amid warnings about food supplies. The floods have ruined 3.6 million hectares of rich farmland and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation 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."
The World Food Program has warned that Pakistan faces a triple threat to food supplies, with seeds, crops and incomes hit.
In southern Pakistan, hundreds of hungry and desperate families from a 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 Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani warned that the country faced inflation of up to 20 per cent and slower economic growth because of the floods, warning of job losses and social unrest.
Meeting Pakistan’s Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh in Washington on Wednesday, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick pledged to help Pakistan set up systems to monitor aid to tackle waste and corruption.