PAKISTAN: Infrastructure badly hit in flood areas
Source: IRIN
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DADU, 5 September 2007 (IRIN) - Aslam Khoro, a farmer in the flood-ravaged
sub-district of K.N. Shah in Dadu District in the southern province of Sindh, about 350km southwest of Karachi, points in the general direction of where his village lay. In front of him, instead of
endless wheat stalks, is a mass of water that stretches to the horizon. A light breeze blows little waves that ripple around almost totally submerged tree-tops and gently rock the boats that are
ferrying people to and from parts of a road that had not been submerged. "When the floods hit, my village - along with about 250 others… not very far from here - was completely cut off
from the rest of the country," Khoro said. "Since then, we've been commuting to this road - which leads to the main highway - by boat. We've had no electricity, no medical help
and our people are completely marooned because the area is covered in water eight to nine feet deep. It's as if we don't exist," Khoro added. Dadu was one of the worst hit districts
when heavy tropical rains in June - prompted by Cyclone Yemyin, which made landfall in Balochistan, the southwestern province that neighbours Sindh - caused massive floods, enveloping hundreds of
square kilometres across south and southwestern Pakistan. The authorities estimated that over 400 people were killed with more than 2.5 million others affected. About 380,000 people have been
reportedly displaced. Two months on, the situation has not improved for locals like Khoro. More rainfall since then has added to the problems as local people struggle to overcome the difficulties of
inadequate shelter, poor living conditions, and lack of access to medical help, with gastro-intestinal illnesses proliferating. In addition, they face the prospect of financial ruin with almost all
seeds-in-stock destroyed, and this year's harvest washed away by seething tides. Infrastructure has been badly hit in the area and government officials say privately that it might take years
for the entire flood-affected area to recover. "It's going to be a long haul," Nizamuddin Lehri, the deputy mayor of Nasirabad, a badly hit district in Balochistan, told IRIN. "I should think it's going to take a few years before things can improve. For example, over 300km of roads were destroyed in Nasirabad District alone. In the rest of the flood area, the
figure runs into a few thousand kilometres of roads that have been damaged or destroyed," Lehri added. Clean drinking water Aid agencies are struggling to provide clean drinking water to as
much of the population as possible but, with hundreds of square kilometres still under water causing problems of accessibility, the battle looks set to be a long one, aid officials said. In Johi, a
Dadu sub-district with several villages still under water, a round white structure rose obtrusively out of the watermarked landscape, signalling a water purification plant set up by Premiere Urgence,
a French non-governmental organisation (NGO). "The plant started functioning about 15 days ago and we hope to start producing roughly 50,000 litres of clean, drinking water daily," Wajid
Bashir, the assistant general programme coordinator for the NGO, told IRIN as a strong breeze blowing across the open landscape made tents flap crazily. "Under National Disaster Management
Authority (NDMA) guidelines, it'll be handed over to the local government by 15 October," he said, adding that the plant would be able to provide clean drinking water to a population of over
15,000 spread across three union councils. Aid agencies are also worried about how the local population is subsisting, with relief supplies either too few or too far away for locals to access them. "We supplied tents and food/non-food items to about 3,400 families in Jhal Magsi, the worst-affected area in Balochistan through our local partners in the area, soon after the floods,"
Mobasher Ahmed, the assistant country director for the NGO Concern, said. "But the recent rains have worsened the situation," he said, adding that it was now time for the aid community to
take fresh stock of the situation. as/at/ar/cb© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org
