WASHINGTON (CNS) — Pakistanis faced new dangers posed by disease as emergency response teams and international aid agencies struggled to rush supplies to millions of people forced to flee the country’s worst flooding in 80 years.
Jack Byrne, Catholic Relief Services’ country representative to Pakistan, said the aid effort has been hampered because bridges and roads have been washed away by monsoon rains and the ensuing floods since late July.
The floods that started in the northern part of the country have generally followed the Indus River, moving southward to Sindh and Punjab provinces.
In parts of northern provinces where floodwaters have receded, people are returning and “are having a hard time identifying where they lived,” Byrne said.
“People are still on the move in and around Sindh,” Byrne told Catholic News Service from his office in Islamabad, the capital, Aug. 17. “Thousands are just living on the road.”
Hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the floods have made their way to the major cities of Karachi and Lahore, taxing each community’s effort to provide adequate food and shelter, he said.
CRS, the U.S. bishops’ international relief and development agency, has collected $6.2 million in emergency funds since the flooding began. Even so, Byrne told CNS, some relief agencies are concerned that donor fatigue is setting in.
“The donor response has been slow,” he said. “It’s what the U.N. calls perception deficit, people thinking the money is not going where it’s needed because they think the government is corrupt. Pakistan is saddened that the world has been slow to respond.”
Byrne said the funds collected by CRS have been used to provide emergency kits to about 3,000 households and a total of about 30,000 people. The kits contain cooking sets, water purification tablets, bottled water, blankets and soap.
“We would like to have 20,000 kits distributed by the Eid holiday, Sept. 10, the end of Ramadan,” he said.
The agency also has started providing transitional shelter to people in the north. The simple wooden structures will provide adequate housing for the short term as people begin to re-establish their routines, he explained.
Once people are settled into new housing, cash-for-work programs will hire people to rebuild roads, clear drainage channels and build small bridges.
The floods have devastated Pakistan’s already fragile economy, wiping out farmland and sweeping away people, livestock and property.
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A man braves a bridge badly damaged by heavy floodwaters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. Photo by Asad Zaidi for CRS
News and photo source: Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
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