Pakistan urged to open up India route to flood aid

SHIKARPUR, Pakistan: International aid agencies struggling to help hundreds of thousands of people displaced by deadly floods in Pakistan have asked for the easing of curbs on imports of food from India, a Pakistani minister said on Wednesday.

Unusually heavy monsoon rains have triggered floods that have submerged a third of the country and killed more than 1,100 people, including 380 children. The United Nations has appealed for $160 million to help with what it termed as an “unprecedented climate catastrophe”.

Pakistan faces surging food prices, compounding the misery for the millions affected by the disaster.

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said the government was considering loosening restrictions on the largely closed border with India to let in supplies of vegetables and other food.

“More than one international agency has approached the government to allow them to bring food items from India through the land border,” Ismail said on Twitter.

He said the government will decide whether to allow that based on supply conditions and after consulting its coalition partners and key stakeholders.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that hundreds of thousands acres of crops have been washed away.

“We have lost rice crop. Fruits and vegetables have been destroyed,” he told reporters after his trip to the flooded areas in the north.

General Akhtar Nawaz, chief of the national disaster agency, has said more than two million acres (809,371 hectares) of agricultural land were flooded.

Very little trade and travel takes place between Pakistan and India despite historic, cultural and family ties.

Pakistan has received nearly 190% more rain than the 30-year average in the quarter through August this year, totalling 390.7 millimetres (15.38 inches). Sindh province in the south, with a population of 50 million, was hardest hit, getting 466% more rain than the 30-year average.

Resulting flash floods have swept away homes, businesses, infrastructure and crops. The government says 33 million people, or 15% of the 220 million-strong South Asian nation, have been affected.

Army helicopters have been busy plucking stranded families from rooftops and patches of dry land and dropping food in inaccessible areas.

Colossal volumes of water are pouring into the Indus river, which cuts through the country from its northern peaks to southern plains, spilling out along its length and leaving vast tracks of land submerged.

Villager Fayyaz Ali, 27, in hard-hit Shikarpur district of Sindh province, has managed to get his family to safety but has little hope of saving his small home surrounded by flood waters.

“The house is going to fall at any moment. It’s inundated,” Ali told Reuters.

Like many villagers, Ali said he had yet to receive any help.

Main roads raised above the fields have become a refuge where people with their bundles of belongings and farm animals seek shelter from the sun and rain under plastic.

Early estimates have put the flood damage at more than $10 billion, the government has said, appealing to the world to help it deal with it has called a man-made climate catastrophe.