Karachi: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has sought emergency foreign assistance and support from international agencies to rebuild the civic infrastructure of the areas of the province damaged by the recent torrential monsoon rains and resultant floods.
The foreign assistance will also be used to rehabilitate the large number of people rendered homeless due to the natural calamity.
Shah sought this assistance as he met concerned diplomats of different countries at the CM House to brief them about widespread devastation caused by recent heavy monsoon rains in the province.
He briefed the diplomats that 136 people had lost their lives while 86 others were injured in different rain and flood-related mishaps in the province. Some 45,961 cattle also died in rural parts of the province.
He said that heavy rains and floods had rendered over 2.3 million people of the province homeless. The disaster demolished 77,343 houses in the province while 1,37,178 houses were partially damaged. Various standing crops on 1,094,150 acres agricultural land were destroyed.
Severely affected
The CM informed the diplomats that nine districts of the province were severely affected by the heavy rains and floods. Among these, 27.28 per cent area of District Mirpurkhas came under flood, 13.2 per cent area of Badin was inundated, 12.25 area of Umerkot, 5.93 per cent area of Tando Allahyar, while 5.79 per cent area of District Sanghar got affected. The Sindh Government has declared total 20 districts of the province as calamity-hit areas.
Shah said that the Sindh government had established 196 makeshift relief camps where shelter had been provided to so far 23,629 rain-affected people using tents.
He said that a major challenge faced by his government was the phenomenal gap between supply and demand of the essential relief items for the calamity-hit people in the province.
For instance, provincial government could supply only 41,135 tents to the homeless people against the demand of 122,100; 24,150 food ration bags were provided against the demand of 279,000; 43,500 mosquito nets were provided to the shelter-less people against the demand of 79,000; 2,200 kitchen kits were supplied against the demand of 11,500; 3,780 tarpaulin sheets were provided against the demand of 10,250; 2,600 jerry cans were provided against the demand of 32,000; while the provincial government arranged only 57 water suction pumps against the demand of 479 such machines in different flood-hit parts of the province.
Vital supply
The CM said that foreign assistance was not just required to bridge the vital supply and demand gap but also to reconstruct basic civic infrastructure of the disaster-hit parts of the province.
The concerned diplomats assured the CM that they would use their good offices to get the emergency foreign support for rebuilding of the calamity-hit areas in the province and also to rehabilitate the people there in distress.
The diplomats who attended the meeting included Robert Silberstein of the USA; Li Bijian of China, Katsunori Ashida of Japan; Didier Talpian of France; Mike Nithavrianakis of the UK; Dr. Salem Al Khaddeim Al Dhanhani of the UAE; and Byram D Avari of Canada.
TheUAE has already announced emergency humanitarian assistance to 100,000 rain-affected families of Sindh.
