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Bleak Eid for flood victims in Pakistan

A year ago, Pakistan faced the worst flooding in living memory.

The Indus River burst its banks swamping an area the size of the UK. The torrent drowned half a million livestock, wiped out crops and swept 1.7 million mud homes downstream into the Arabian Sea. 2000 lives were lost.

In May this year, I went to see what had become of those who had lost everything but their lives.

My first discovery was that rebuilding work was well underway.

Aid agencies leapt to action when disaster struck and have not stopped since. Through World Vision, Kiwis have donated an impressive NZ$900,000 to the cause. 81 cents out of every dollar ended up in the field.

That has enabled us to employ 3500 tenant farmers to dig irrigation canals and restore other critical agricultural infrastructure.

They earn 350 Pakistani Rupees ($4.60) per day as part of our ‘cash-for-work’ programme; more than four times the average wage.

I met bright-eyed children in educational programmes, aptly named ‘Child-Friendly-Spaces’. 16,000 are taking part in the initiative.

The youngsters were eager to recite poems they had learnt and once they knew I was from New Zealand, just as keen to list off the names of our moderately successful cricketers. Colourful drawings of mangoes and chickens adorned the walls of these places.

The name of each object was written neatly underneath in Urdu and English.

These substitute schools and kindergartens are filling the void left by the 11,000 schools that were washed away.

Apparent misfortune

Later, at a World Vision health clinic, I stood quietly watching a tape measure tighten on a child’s bicep, knowing she was much older than her tiny frame suggested. Though she was very thin, she survived. She was one of 300,000 children we have assisted since the floods.

World Vision has helped 900,000 individuals the length of the Indus Valley.

The relief programme has come at a cost of $US 55 million and will last another year until the recovery phase concludes.

While there has certainly been progress in Pakistan, all is not well.

The naked vulnerability which left 20 million people susceptible to flooding last year is still apparent. In fact, the UN has warned that up to 5 million Pakistanis are at severe risk again this monsoon season (July-September).

Why? One explanation is many people live on riverbanks. They simply have nowhere else to go. Their flaking mud huts struggle with minor downpours let alone violent torrents of water.

A lack of money is not to blame for Pakistan’s complete absence of emergency preparedness. It is just a matter of priorities. For instance, currently, a mere 1% of GDP goes to health and 7.5 times more money is spent on defence than education.

That is hard to accept when you stand before a classroom of impressionable young children. It is even tougher when their teacher asks how she is going to run the school when the current flood relief money runs out.

“I don’t know” was my reply.

It will be an absolute tragedy if the children we have fed, sheltered, educated and treated for medical problems are told they must soon fend for themselves.

Twenty million children in Pakistan already do just that. We need to ensure that ordinary people receive all the support they need so at the very least they are able to escape the appalling cycle of disaster that looms once again.

Ian McInnes is World Vision’s Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Manager based in Auckland. If you would like to contribute towards to World Vision’s continuing work in Pakistan or sponsor a child, call 0800-800776. You could also donate online www.worldvision.org.nz

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