FLOOD (PAKISTAN) AN OPPORTUNITY TO REBUILD

Water being one of the most needed natural resource and being one of the greatest blessings of Almighty Allah, can surprisingly cause wonders to people sometimes. 

Talking about flood and looking over the history of flood certainly reminds us about the flood that occurred on 1931. The worst flood of the world hit at Huang He (River Yellow) China, making a loss of 1,000,000 to 3,700,000 people and much more.

Similarly, history witnessed a great disaster when flood hit Pakistan, following the heavy monsoon rains on 29 October, 2010 was a regular morning, and mothers were serving breakfast to their children. Pakistan was trying hard to overcome the 27th July incident of plane crash. None amongst us did even think that this flood will create the history, the history of being one of the worst floods.

Usually June - July is the period when students enjoy vacation season. People also visit abroad or plan Pakistan Tour, but none of us even thought that this July will end up with tears in many eyes. According to the FFC (Pakistan's Federal Flood Commission)  the flood was of more than 1.04 million cusecs (measuring the flow rate of 1 cubic foot per second) and has broken the century-old record of 0.9 million cusecs in the flooding of 1901.  The flood affected areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh are currently facing worst conditions in Pakistan, the damages being immense. Along with human loss, livestock and households, major crops like cotton, sugar, rice and wheat stocks have also been damaged in the country. The FFC also reported that the flood destroyed everything at large scale according to an average disaster it affected 11,003 villages, damaging 697,799 houses and washing away the crops at an area of over 1.79 million hectares besides perishing 220,061 cattle heads. About one third of Pakistan has been hit by flood spawned by torrential rainfall. More than 4 million Pakistanis have been left homeless and they are hoping our Government to help them, but still almost 6 months after Pakistan’s worst flood in 80 years, millions of people remain without access to food, clean water, or health care. According to an estimated 15 million people currently lack access to clean water and 8 million lack food,

The official death toll is around at least 1,710 people died and another 2,632 were injured but the true number of people killed and injured in this disaster may turn out to be higher and countless ever. The area is affected around 120,000 - 140,000 areas (in Sq. Km) and the Economy has damaged around 7,791 million USD. The national economy was expected to grow four percent this year, but it ended up decreasing by 2.5 percent causing massive job losses and affecting incomes of thousands of families.

The government said about 200 million dollars would be required for recovery and relief work and over 1 billion dollars would be needed to repair key infrastructure in the country.

Even before the flood, 60 percent of rural Pakistanis were living at or below subsistence level. Now, with millions more hungry and homeless children and youth having nothing to due and getting no help by Government, is something that is about to explode. Their hunger is really the best way to address the war on terror. It seems today as if pictures have started lying to our naked eyes, one of the most beautiful places in this world have become a ground with rocks and water only, there is no greenery, no roads, no communication networks and other necessity things.

Moreover, Flood also gives us an opportunity to make improvements in our capacity to forecast and prepare for such disasters so that the loss can be minimized. The Government should introduce new policies to recover the loss that have been made by the deadly flood. The “Agriculture department of Pakistan” should take an urgent action by supporting the farmers and people who are in need of help. Subsidies should be introduced on growing materials. Land should be allotted according to their requirements and this allotment will give them an inspiration that our Government is concerned. The result of taking these small actions by our Government will make our farmers concern about productivity and quality. Jobs should be offered to the people who are eligible and the pricing of the necessity resources shall be kept as low as they it could be. Every one should be given equal advantages according to the requirements.

The Government can also introduce some extra ordinary new programs; keeping the density of children present in those effected areas. They Government can arrange activities related to education, sports, training them about different skills like “using computers, machineries and a lot more.” The Government can offer some jobs to the people who are uneducated by keeping their skills in mind, as most of the people are uneducated in the effected areas. There are a lot of ways which our Government can do by using resources and implementations of lawful activities to get over the loss of economy and to over come the people’s needs for those effected areas. These ways are very important for us. Pakistan being one of the major countries listed in terrorist activities and our youth should not be forced to join those types of negatives activities to earn, for fulfilling their needs.  The best possible example in this case is of Bangladesh. Bangladesh faces floods almost every year and has learnt from their past. We must observe the steps taken by the government of Bangladesh to reduce the loss by natural disasters.

We must not ignore warnings given by the Pakistan Meteorological Department regarding the anomalous amount of rains expected in the region. The chain of commands shall be set in a way that the deliverance of messages isn’t delayed and the messages are not distorted. Actions should be taken swiftly and mobilization of people should be quick in such urgent cases.




This article was written by Shahroz Ali
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