Three Months After Onset of Floods in Pakistan, 3.8 Million Have Emergency Shelter
Three months after the onset of Pakistan's worst floods on record,
many of the victims have returned to their towns and villages to
salvage what is left of their belongings and to repair or rebuild
their houses. But many of the poorest remain without adequate
shelter, with little prospect of rebuilding their homes or their
livelihoods.
According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA),
more than 1.7 million houses were destroyed or damaged by the
floods, which started at the end of July in the north of the
country before rolling south in an unprecedented wave of
destruction.
The 70 agencies of the IOM-led Shelter Cluster have delivered
emergency shelter to 543,131 families or around 3.8 million people
so far. But an estimated 7 million people have yet to be
reached.
"The immense scale of the disaster continues to pose a huge
challenge to the government and aid agencies. We are still a long
way from providing shelter to every flood victim," says IOM
Regional Representative for West and Central Asia Hassan Abdel
Moneim Mostafa.
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Unmet shelter needs are particularly high in Sindh province,
where the flood waters have only recently receded. In some areas,
such as Dadu district, some people are still trapped by stagnant
pools that have yet to drain away.
According to the government, nearly a million homes were damaged
or destroyed in the province. IOM has been scaling up the
distribution of shelter and other essential aid items through its
provincial hubs in Sukkur and Hyderabad, but the needs still far
outstrip the capacity of the government and aid agencies on the
ground to deliver.
In Punjab, where around half a million of homes were destroyed
or damaged, most people have returned to their places of origin.
IOM and its cluster partners have provided thousands of families
with non-food relief items, including tarpaulins, blankets, kitchen
sets and jerry cans.
At the same time, IOM has launched a pilot early recovery
programme in Sindh and Punjab, helping those flood victims able to
return to their land to rebuild their homes. The scheme aims to
provide families with one-room shelters using locally procured
materials and traditional construction methods.
"The project is designed to meet the different needs of each
family and to encourage community self-help. IOM will provide
essential materials and technical advice, but families will have to
build their own shelters, with the help of their neighbours," says
Abdel Moneim Mostafa.
As the waters recede and people return home, IOM has also ramped
up its activities in the field of mass communications and health.
Its mass communications programme informs flood victims about the
availability of relief services and how to access them, and helps
aid agencies to disseminate crucial humanitarian information.
In the field of health, IOM has also set up four clinics in
Punjab and Sindh that have treated over 10,000 patients since they
opened in September. Most people were treated for acute respiratory
infections, gastroenteritis and suspected malaria.
"Overall, we're much better off now than right after the floods
when we had diarrhoea and other diseases and spent eight days on
the roof of our house without enough food. But we still lack
medicines," says Sadiq Hussain, a 48-year-old father of 12. He came
to get treatment for a stomach ulcer at one of IOM's mobile
outreach clinics near his village of Khot Lalalshah in Punjab.
IOM's Pakistan Emergency Flood Response has appealed for USD 114
million and to date has confirmed funding of USD 33.7 million from
international donors. These include the United Kingdom, the United
States, Canada, Japan, Sweden, ECHO, the UN Central Emergency
Response Fund, and the multi-donor Pakistan Emergency Relief
Fund.
For more information on IOM's activities in Pakistan, to
download the IOM Appeal or to donate to IOM's flood response,
please go to:
"/jahia/Jahia/pakistan/lang/en" target="" title=
"">http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pakistan.
For information on the Emergency Shelter Cluster, please go to:
"http://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/" target="_blank"
title="">http://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/.
For more information please contact:
Saleem Rehmat
IOM Islamabad
Tel: +92.300 856 0341
E-mail:
"mailto:srehmat@iom.int">srehmat@iom.int
or
Eliane Engeler
Tel: +92.300 852 6357
E-mail:
"mailto:eengeler@iom.int">eengeler@iom.int