17/11/2022
$30b flood assessment grossly flawed
ISLAMABAD:
In a startling revelation, a top official has admitted that the government did not have district-wise data of the population affected by the recent devastating floods in the country, undermining the authenticity of the Post-Disaster Need Assessment report that put the losses at over $30 billion.
The shocking disclosure of ignoring the human cost in terms of man and material was made by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Director (Operations) Brig Muhammad Umar, while responding to a query during the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance held on Wednesday.
As the winter sets in, the absence of the data has left hundreds of thousands people without basic needs such as blankets and tents, leaving them at the mercy of fast approaching harsh weather, revealed the committee proceedings.
The committee meeting was convened to discuss two pressing issues — whether any punitive action was taken against the commercial banks that manipulated the exchange rate, and most important of all the relief and rehabilitation effort in the flood-affected areas.
“I do not have the data of the affected people,” commented the NDMA’s director (operations) when MNA Dr Nafisa Shah inquired whether he knew how many people were affected in Sindh’s Khairpur district.
Dr Shah raised the question when the director briefed that so far, the authority had distributed 9,000 blankets and about 9,380 tents in district Khairpur — the constituency of Dr Shah.
According to the assessment of Dr Shah, between 100,000 to 150,000 people have been affected by the floods in the Khairpur district. She said that since there was no town- and district-level data available with the NDMA so far, thousands of people in her constituency had been left at the mercy of harsh weather and in search of warm shelter and clothes to avoid being exposed to cold.
“There is no denying the fact that the relief goods are coming but there is no union council-level data available,” she added. The MNA said that house listing exercise had started but complained the exercise was carrying out at a slow pace.
The revelations also put a question mark on the government’s claims of providing relief to the people and the utility of the PDNA report that has been prepared by the World Bank with the collaboration of the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union.
The report has estimated the cost of damages and losses at $30.2 billion and worked out the reconstruction cost at $16.3 billion. But it does not provide the details of the 33 million flood-affected people that the government and the PDNA reports have claimed.
“One-third of the country has been under water, and 33 million people have been affected. Nearly 8 million people are reportedly displaced,” according to the PDNA. The report further stated that the floods had taken the lives of more than 1,700 people, one-third of which were children.
