IOM Islamabad last night took delivery of a consignment of 17,000
blankets and 1,153 (24 x 100 ft) rolls of plastic sheet flown in by
USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

IOM trucks loaded the shipment at Chaklala Airbase and are
currently driving to Multan in Punjab province, where IOM and the
group of 41 relief agencies that form the Emergency Shelter Cluster
are establishing a new hub, in close cooperation with the National
Disaster Management Agency (NDMA.)

Shelter quality plastic sheet, which is in short supply in
Pakistan,  is desperately needed by an estimated 300,000
families whose homes have been damaged or destroyed by Pakistan's
worst ever floods, according to the cluster, which is coordinated
by IOM.

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The Multan hub will take deliveries of shelter and other relief
goods shipped in by road and air and dispatch them to the worst
flood-affected areas. It will join existing hubs in Islamabad and
Peshawar.

An additional shelter hub will open in Sukkur in Sindh province
later this week. At least 105,000 homes have been damaged or
destroyed in Punjab and Sindh, according to the
government. 

The USAID items will arrive in Multan later today, together with
a consignment of 3,000 plastic sheets and 3,000 kitchen sets
procured by IOM, which is expected to arrive by truck from
Karachi.

IOM today delivered 10 trucks to the Multan Commissioner's
Office to support government aid distribution. Priority
distribution areas from Multan are Muzaffargargh district (Kot
Addu, Sanawan, Mehmood Kot tehsils) and Rajanpur district (Janpur,
Rojhan tehsils.) Rajanpur is not currently accessible by road from
Multan and relief goods may have to be delivered by government
helicopter.   

Last night IOM Islamabad also took delivery of 9,000 shelter
kits - comprising plastic sheet, poles and ropes - donated by the
UK Department of International Development (DFID). The kits are
being trucked to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province today.

IOM expects to take delivery of and distribute another 1,000
tents, 24,000 buckets and 48,600 blankets donated by DFID in the
course of this week.

All the items will be distributed to flood victims by IOM and
its local and international partners. In Multan, these include
local NGOs SPO and NRSP. Teams on the ground try to work with
village elders before any aid distribution to identify the families
most in need. They then provide the families with tokens that can
be exchanged for tents and other relief items when the distribution
takes place.

For more information on IOM's activities in Pakistan and flood
relief pictures, please go to: "paragraph-link-no-underline" href="/jahia/Jahia/pakistan" target=
"_blank" title="">http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pakistan. For
more information on the work of the Emergency Shelter Cluster
please go to: "https://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/" target="_blank"
title="">https://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/.

For additional information please contact:

Chris Lom

IOM Islamabad

Tel. +92.3085204684

E-mail: "mailto:clom@iom.int">clom@iom.int

or

Saleem Rehmat

Tel. +92.3008560341

E-mail: "mailto:srehmat@iom.int">srehmat@iom.int