Ronan Kelly
Retired 2020
Pakistan floods: No food, no homes, no help
Travelling to one of the areas of Pakistan worst affected by this summer's devastating floods, Jane Corbin finds a community struggling to cope.
By Jane Corbin, Dadu 7:00AM GMT 12 Dec 2010
The water stretched as far as the eye could see, with only the tops of trees showing that the Dadu in Sindh had once been a fertile and productive agricultural plain.
But, after 30 years of visiting and reporting from Pakistan, I found the sight of the flooded city of KN Shah even more shocking and surreal.
Some 200,000 people once lived there. Now half of them had fled - and the rest were stranded in what remained of the city after it was inundated by water. Gaunt men on rooftops gestured wildly at us, as animals and children clustered around them above the swirling muddy waves.
...
Five months later, huge areas of the country are still stricken, and farming families who once provided for themselves and for others through the crops they grew are reduced to the status of helpless supplicants, still unable even to make a start on rebuilding their lives and livelihoods
....
The shocking fact about events in Pakistan is that even now, almost two months after this journey in late October, so little has improved. Large areas of Sindh remain under water. Tents, long lines of white canvas along the embankments, have been erected for the many families made homeless as an estimated 1.6 million houses countrywide were damaged or destroyed by the flood waters.
But, as the chill of winter sets in, there are still an estimated 600,000 families without even emergency shelter.
....
Today KN Shah remains under three feet of water and community leaders say the government is still failing to help them. The UN has delivered food in recent weeks but has warned that Dadu faces a protracted emergency well into next year. There still aren't enough tents, despite government promises to provide them. So saturated is the soil that it could take another three to six months for the waters to subside.
....
"The world's attention is waning but millions still need assistance," said Baroness Amos, the former British minister who is now the UN official in charge of humanitarian and emergency aid and visited the relief effort last week. "The world must not close its eyes to the needs of Pakistan's people."
*Jane Corbin's film Pakistan's Flood Doctor, a Below the Radar production for This World will be shown on Monday (13 December) on BBC2 at 7pm
Please read the full article at; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...Pakistan-floods-No-food-no-homes-no-help.html
Travelling to one of the areas of Pakistan worst affected by this summer's devastating floods, Jane Corbin finds a community struggling to cope.
By Jane Corbin, Dadu 7:00AM GMT 12 Dec 2010
The water stretched as far as the eye could see, with only the tops of trees showing that the Dadu in Sindh had once been a fertile and productive agricultural plain.
But, after 30 years of visiting and reporting from Pakistan, I found the sight of the flooded city of KN Shah even more shocking and surreal.
Some 200,000 people once lived there. Now half of them had fled - and the rest were stranded in what remained of the city after it was inundated by water. Gaunt men on rooftops gestured wildly at us, as animals and children clustered around them above the swirling muddy waves.
...
Five months later, huge areas of the country are still stricken, and farming families who once provided for themselves and for others through the crops they grew are reduced to the status of helpless supplicants, still unable even to make a start on rebuilding their lives and livelihoods
....
The shocking fact about events in Pakistan is that even now, almost two months after this journey in late October, so little has improved. Large areas of Sindh remain under water. Tents, long lines of white canvas along the embankments, have been erected for the many families made homeless as an estimated 1.6 million houses countrywide were damaged or destroyed by the flood waters.
But, as the chill of winter sets in, there are still an estimated 600,000 families without even emergency shelter.
....
Today KN Shah remains under three feet of water and community leaders say the government is still failing to help them. The UN has delivered food in recent weeks but has warned that Dadu faces a protracted emergency well into next year. There still aren't enough tents, despite government promises to provide them. So saturated is the soil that it could take another three to six months for the waters to subside.
....
"The world's attention is waning but millions still need assistance," said Baroness Amos, the former British minister who is now the UN official in charge of humanitarian and emergency aid and visited the relief effort last week. "The world must not close its eyes to the needs of Pakistan's people."
*Jane Corbin's film Pakistan's Flood Doctor, a Below the Radar production for This World will be shown on Monday (13 December) on BBC2 at 7pm
Please read the full article at; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...Pakistan-floods-No-food-no-homes-no-help.html