‘Floods have exposed govt machinery’s failure’ in Pakistan

The News (Pakistan): It shows the failure of the government machinery to deal with disasters killing hundreds of people as human right activists and other experts involved in rehabilitation of affected people are now asking the state to fulfil its duties in ensuring the right to life in Pakistan in accordance with the relevant constitutional provisions.

A seminar, titled, “Disaster Management, Development Structure Challenges and Capacity Issues”, jointly organised by Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler) and Pakistan Fisherfolk’s Forum (PFF) at the PILER Centre discussed at length the question of protection of lives of citizens and failure of the institutions in Pakistan and concluded that there was dire to hold a continuous public debate on the issue of flood-affected people.

Senior economists, professionals, civil society experts, and those working on the relief and rehabilitation of flood-affected people noticed that the disasters occurred because of the failure of the state institutions. The speakers underlined the aspects of the lives of the flood- and rain-affected people, their rehabilitation in relation to their citizenship rights, and a lack of adequate measures on the part of the State.

Dr Kaiser Bengali, a senior economist and former Advisor to the Sindh Chief Minister on Planning and Development, said that the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) in Sindh remained ineffective during the recent floods. Being Advisor, he said he visited the flood-affected areas in Kashmor and Shikarpur in 2010 and designed guidelines to build shelters to avoid losses in case of disasters in the future. Villages should have roads and drains to avert flooding. He said the provincial government constructed houses in model villages and provided brick roads and drains and during 2011 heavy rains and no flooding occurred there. He said that the district disaster management authorities were not effective in any district, which caused problems in relief distribution....

Indus river Flood in Alipur, Muzaffar Garh, Pakistan- The 2010 Pakistan floods began in late July 2010, resulting from heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected the Indus River basin