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The death toll from the Pakistan floods is now recorded at 1,700, with over 33 million people affected. Quoted as the ‘tenth costliest’ disaster in a decade with some areas still under flood water which could possibly take a few more months to recede. Areas where flood waters have receded, the needs of children and women are becoming more and more urgent and critical. Malnourished, hungry children are struggling to fight against malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid, acute respiratory infections, and painful skin conditions.

Millions of agrarian communities have lost their homes and livelihoods and have no access to food, shelter, or clean drinking water.

Community World Service Asia, with the support of its partners, is on the ground in Pakistan, providing immediate support to some of the most hard-hit and remote flood-affected communities.

Our response is currently focused in four districts of Sindh, the province most severely hit by the disaster. We have deployed seven Mobile Health Units (MHUs) that are operational across Mirpurkhas, Matiari, Umerkot and Khairpur.

The Mobile health Units are providing curative and preventive health care through experienced and trained health and medical practitioners to flood-affected communities living in temporary shelters and camps as well as communities that are currently hard to reach due to stagnant flood-water.  The most common illnesses reported at the MHUs since its operations are skin diseases, diarrhea, malaria, eye infections, and more. We are also conducting health awareness sessions on common diseases found in the area such as scabies, malaria, diarrhea, Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI), hepatitis C as well as on family planning, malnutrition, maternal and neonatal care.

CWSA’s Emergencies teams are closely working with government health departments to identify areas and communities who are still left unreached. Further needs assessments and participants selection is underway with the engagement of affected communities for our cash support projects which will also start implementation shortly.

28,007 Flood affected people reached through MHUs

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Twenty-five year-old Vadhri of Rohiraro rarely leaves home. Even though her village is just sixty kilometres southeast of Umerkot, she has not been to town for a couple of years. She may have had some liberty had her husband been alive, but since his death in 2018, she has been under the constant watch of her meddlesome, overbearing father-in-law.

Vadhri’s husband was a maker of the famous farasi (camel and goat hair carpet) of Sindh. Working ten hours a day, seven days a week, he made around PKR 4000 a month (Approx. USD 20). Though it was a pittance for the masterful work he was doing, he kept at it but remained perpetually in bondage to the middleman who provided him the required materials for the product. To this loan shark he was obligated to sell his produce at a price set by the buyer. That, it goes without saying, was considerably lower than the market price. Like hundreds of other Meghwar men engaged in this craft in Umerkot, he was too poor to procure the materials and become independent of the exploitation.

What little time he got, he laboured in the five-acre plot of land he owned in the village. Long years ago, when his father was a young man, rains were timely and plentiful and this holding provided the family with sufficient food for the year. But things had changed and now there were years when rains failed and he lost what he had invested in his land.

Meanwhile, even the priceless and exquisitely beautiful farasi was going out of fashion. Once a prized adornment in any self-respecting Sindhi home, its demand dwindled and craftsmen turned to other professions. Vadhri’s husband resolved to become a driver. From what he knew, that was a line of good and regular income. But to be a driver he did not have to go to school. All that was needed was to attach himself to a vehicle as helper to the driver.

The rules for this apprenticeship are that he was to clean the vehicle, fetch the master his cup of tea and food and be much like a slave. The master considering he was doing the apprentice a favour by teaching him a valuable skill, did not pay any salary. And so from being a slave to the farasi middleman and making a meagre living, the man became a slave to the driver without a salary.

Over time, he was permitted to do a little bit of reverse and forward practice in the village. But before he could actually master the skill, misfortune struck. On a journey perched precariously atop some baggage on a desert road, the vehicle he was riding struck an unseen speed breaker. The jolt threw the poor man onto the road where he quickly gave up his ghost because of a head injury. He was barely twenty-five years old.

Vadhri was left alone to fend for herself and her three little children. It was just as well that she was a skilled embroiderer of the prized Sindhi cap. But she too was in bondage to the buyer who supplied her the materials and purchased each complete piece for PKR 800 (Approx. USD 4). It took Vadhri a week to finish one cap, but there never was a month when she had work all four weeks. Her income therefore floated around PKR 2500 per month (Approx. USD 12).

She was fortunate to receive the monthly monetary aid under the Benazir Income Support Programme1  (renamed Ehsas) which allowed her to maintain her eldest child in the local school. Evidently a very foresighted woman, Vadhri dreams of enrolling the other two when they reach the age because, as she says, it is only be through education that they will break the shackles of poverty.

Despite the BISP support being just PKR 1000 per month (Approx. USD 8) and her own income only a little more, Vadhri, began to put away little by little. When she had saved about PKR 5000 (Approx. USD 24), she started a small general merchandise store in the village. This she gave to the charge of her father-in-law. Once again, the profit was not consumed but ploughed back into the business to constantly increase it. Meanwhile, she herself continued diligently with her cap making to feed her family.

But PKR 2500 Approx. USD 12) can scarcely keep a family of four fed for a month. Therefore, while she restricted herself to two meagre meals a day, she ensured that her children were fed as best as they could be given the tiny resource. And so, if the CWSA field staff picked a deserving candidate for food aid under the Humanitarian, Early Recovery, and Development project, it was Vadhri. This was just in time because the PKR 7000 (Approx. USD 34) accrued from selling her 2021 autumn crop of millets, guar and lentils was all but used up over the winter when children need more nourishment.

Since April 2022, her three children have food much better than they had ever had in their lives. Vadhri herself is now eating three meals a day. In mid-May, her larder still contained some of the supplies of the first handout even as she expected the second instalment the next day. She will not have to sell her goats to feed her family, she says. Why, in those difficult days of the Corona virus she had to sell two of her eight goats and had fretted that she soon might be left with no goats at all.

In May 2022, with food secured, Vadhri was yet putting away all her cap income for she had no idea how much longer the food aid would continue. There will be a time she will have to buy her own food for which she needed to save up, she said. Her next concern was that the PKR 500 (Approx. USD 2) that she spends every month on her school-going child should always be at hand. Soon the next child too will be eligible for enrolment. The food aid has made that possible.

Meanwhile, as her store continues to grow, one can only wish her well and would like to see her blossoming into an entrepreneur in a year or so.

1 The Benazir Income Support Programme is a federal unconditional cash transfer poverty reduction program in Pakistan.

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Local and national non-profit organisations and Disaster Management Authorities (DMAs) are most often the first responders to a disaster, besides communities themselves. While being at the forefront and equipped with rich indigenous knowledge and experience, they face a multitude of challenges while responding to multiple crises due to institutional and staff capacity constraints. “Local organisations are often focused on their project work and have limited resources. The knowledge and opportunities to mainstream accountability in their working mechanisms is limited and complying with all international standards becomes difficult. Therefore, there was a need for formal capacity building of local organisations and disaster management authorities, on quality response and accountability to affected people” says Aamir Malik, Director RAPID Fund, Concern Worldwide.

As a Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) Alliance member and Sphere regional partner and focal point, Community World Service Asia partnered with Concern Worldwide (CWW) to augment the skills and competencies of Concern’s staff, their partner organisations and DMAs, on Quality and Accountability to Affected Populations (Q&AAP) through a series of workshops. “Concern assessed institutional needs for training and identified gaps between project interventions and the application of Quality & Accountability standards. Concern collaborated with Community World Service Asia, who already have substantial expertise in the field of mainstreaming Q&A, Sphere, and Core Humanitarian Standard in humanitarian action,” shared Ishtiaq Sadiq from Concern Worldwide.

After an MoU was signed between the two organisations in 2019, a thorough consultative process between the two parties took place. Multiple meetings were arranged to discuss and finalise course outlines of Q&AAP trainings; complete workshop materials were developed and finalised as per CWW feedback. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the trainings transitioned into a virtual model. Since the start of the collaboration, eight workshops have been conducted for 187 participants representing 87 different partner organisations from Sindh and Balochistan as well as PDMA Sindh. These workshops aimed to raise awareness on key standards such as Sphere and the CHS that support organisations with effectively mainstreaming and implementing quality and accountability through a people-centred approach. Through the learning series, participants were enabled to outline opportunities and challenges in implementing Q&AAP, and were provided a platform for experience sharing and peer learning on its practical implementation

Participants strengthened their skills on Q&A standards and commitments and learned to apply them according to their contexts. They also designed a Q&AAP learning action plan tailored to their specific needs and identified ways of collaborating and coordinating with other partners to improve Q&AAP in a response. “We not only designed a training workshop for the participating organisations, but we provided technical support in mainstreaming the standards in the organisation systems and policies,” shared Aamir.

Concern’s Rapid Fund collaborated with CWSA on its Q&A interventions and jointly developed a plan for its implementation. CWSA conducted the Q&A focused trainings for them with the facilitation of the Rapid Fund team.

Lessons Learned; Improving Accountability Together

A virtual meeting was held in June 2022 to draw conclusions on the workshops’ successes and failures to improve content and resources for future workshops. During the meeting, the objectives and methodology of the workshop were shared, the draft content was presented and analysed and results and challenges thoroughly discussed. By the end of the meeting, recommendations for future learning events were brainstormed and shared.

Participants’ Selection, Self-Assessment and Pre-Training Coordination

Gender balance was ensured during participants’ selection which was done based on relevance and experience of the training topic allowing richer, more contextualised discussions and peer learnings.
Self-assessment done by each participating organisation to evaluate its structure, policies and procedures was an effective tool to gauge organisational standing on Q&AAP and identify improvement areas. This led to effective development of training plans and agenda based on participants’ needs and expectations.

Resources such as Sphere handbooks shared prior to the training were useful, allowing participants to review them and come prepared with some knowledge of the topics to be discussed. WhatsApp groups were created for participants, which allowed peer learning and continuous coordination.

Workshop Assessment

Appropriate time allocation and pace, and recap of learnings from the previous day played a key role in keeping participants engaged throughout the workshop and ensured consistent productivity during the sessions. The workshops were conducted online for which orientation on Zoom was given to participants in addition to provision of internet devices to prevent technical glitches. The training was made interactive and engaging through open discussions, breakout rooms and utilization of Google Jamboard. Comprehensive sessions on Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) increased awareness of most organisations. Case studies for Q&AAP guidelines were shared from the Asia Pacific region such as a CRM developed by World Vision in Sri Lanka, giving participants contextualised and local examples from the region.

Pre- training resource sharing proved to be effective and were used post-training by participants to refer to guidelines, standards and other tool kits. The pre and post tests were easy to take/complete.

Institutional Capacity Strengthening

Upon training completion of each module, a technical assistance phase was launched within a couple of months that offered coaching and mentoring support to organisations in developing and updating Q&AAP related guidelines, namely a Code of Conduct (COC) and Complaint Response Mechanism (CRM). CWSA provided inputs and guidance through sharing of templates, sample documents and key notes to participating organisations throughout the process; their progress was regularly monitored until final submissions were made by each of them.

Updated policies of organisations were appreciated by networks and funding partners. It also paved way for more effective implementation of Q&A tools and techniques in organisational processes and policies.
The ARTS Foundation did not have a CRM prior to the workshop; they utilised the draft shared with participants during the technical assistance phase to develop one from scratch. SHIFA developed specialised policies on each topic as the organisation had a joint policy before the workshop. Community Development Foundation (CDF) developed its COC and CRM policies which provided them a pathway to apply for CHS Alliance membership.

Key Learnings & Takeaways:

“The participating organisations are now more familiar with globally recognised Quality & Accountability initiatives including Sphere, Humanitarian Standard Partnership (HSP) and Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS). Organisations have also mainstreamed CHS and the Sphere handbook in their newly developed or revised policies and guidelines on CoC and CRMs for improved accountability towards the communities they are serving.” Speaker/Technical Expert on Q&A

“Nari Development Organisation (NDO) has established a CRM and placed complaint boxes within the office and the communities we are working in. We are also conducting orientation sessions with the NDO staff and communities regarding the new CRM policy and its processes. This initiative has mainstreamed accountability towards the communities and staff we work with and ensures a people-centred approach.” Zahid Hussain, Nari Development Organisation (NDO)

“Every action has to be guided by the common belief in the equality of all people, the inviolability of their rights and the right of each individual to self-determination. In the spirit of solidarity and humanity, the goal of every organisation is to improve the lives of people in the places where they can work. This workshop provided guiding tools, such as CoC and CRM, which allowed us to mainstream accountability in all the work we do. We updated our existing policies and adhered to the CHS and Sphere standards to better respond and allow community voices to be heard.” Liza Khan, Community Development Foundation (CDF)

“The extensive feedback we received on our existing CoC and CRM allowed us to mainstream CHS and Sphere Standards in our revised policies. Moreover, we receive all kinds of complaints. Some are relevant to our work and some do not relate to our work. There have been instances when we have received fake complaints as well. Organisations should be able to differentiate between these complaints and address them equally and in a transparent manner.” Gulab Rai, Sukaar Foundation

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Some six hours from Karachi, we set foot on a wooden boat to sail through a village that was drowning in water. A village that could never have been imagined to be sailed through instead of being walked through. A village that once was home to over 2700 people and more than five hundred families. A village with green, fertile lands for pasture and two neatly built public schools for the children who called this village their home. A home that was no more for many.

After sailing for more than two kilometers through what seemed like a deserted ghost town, with houses half submerged in water, tree tops peeking out from under, an eerie sound of insects and nothing but mucky brown water under us, we reached a house which showed some sign of life and sound. The only inhabited house in the entire village. As we carefully stepped out of the boat, directly into a portion of the house, we were warmly greeted with a smile and a hug by an aging woman. She was Tejan, the proud owner of this fairly large house with five to six rooms surrounding an open patio in the middle.

The floors were muddy, with standing water in most parts of the house and in the patio laid some charpayis1 which had silver utensils lined up, like they were just washed. Tejan quickly commented, “We just got done washing all the utensils”. To which our natural question was how and with what they were washing their utensils and clothes (as those were also hanging freshly washed on the ropes in the courtyard). “We use this water (pointing at the flood water settled around their house). This is the only water we have access to. We use it to wash clothes and to bathe. We try to keep it in the sun so that the dirt settles down first. We used to have a water reserve (pointing at a water tank) but with the rains, it leaked and all the dirty water got mixed into it. So we have no option but to use this. We use it for cooking too.”

We were soon joined by a group of more women – young and old, living in the same house. Some six to seven families, all related presumably, lived in this once lively house. All the women were cheerful despite the experiences they had recently lived through and the conditions they were currently living in. These women, along with a few small children (a baby, one slightly older and a 13-year-old), were the only ones who had ‘willingly’ stayed back when the entire village was evacuated by army helicopters some three weeks ago. When asked why they had stayed back, they said they had to protect their home and their belongings and could not leave it to the water to take away.

After more casual conversation, it was revealed that this household belonged to a Baloch tribe, who are traditionally considered more conservative in this area, and Baloch women ‘never mingle with men from outside their community’. It was due to this very reason that these women, along with most of their children and babies, were ‘asked’ to stay behind and protect their assets so that they are not exposed to other men and other communities living in emergency camps or outside on the roadside (where many families of this village had temporarily settled).

Tejan is a widow and mother of eleven children, most of them married. Two of her sons live in this house with them. One of them, who works at a government office, returned to his job after the rains to ensure some livelihood remains. The other son, who relied mostly on their livestock and small agrarian garden, has temporarily settled on the roadside in a self-made tent with his children to get whatever in-kind support he can from government agencies, good samaritans or charity organisations passing by.

Since the monsoon rains hit their village two months ago, Tejan’s brother has been occasionally supporting their household – he sends in some dry food (like flour, lentils, sometimes milk) and water. The water he sends is treated like “holy water”, Tejan laughed. “We use it very sparingly as we know it cannot last all of us (women living here and children) very long. I do not think my brother can also keep supporting us more. His own house and lands have also been affected.”

With increasing food insecurity by the day, the iron ladies of this house must ensure that the food they get in charity must last them long enough to sustain as they have no idea when the water around their house and in their village will recede, or when they will receive proper help and aid. They are living in constant uncertainty. The only hope they have is their prayer and the belief that help will come. “We mostly eat one meal a day. That meal consists of some flour we cook together with chopped onions, chillies and rarely tomatoes (chutney). We cook all of it together because we do not have enough fire-wood or fuel so we cannot waste it on cooking roti and curry separately. The chai we make is not what we used to have before. Our chai was very good, now it’s just like warm water.”

“Many of us have not stepped out of this house since the floods. We stay here and look after the house and the little children. We do not let them go out much and have to guard them well as there are many snakes in the water that come to our house too. We have heard that a lot of the children in our village have also gotten sick. Moreover, just one trip, one side of the way, costs 50 rupees (US $0.21) per person. We cannot afford this ride up to the road so we let our sons and men bring to us what we need and what they can bring,” shared Tejan.

Skin and eye infections have become increasingly common among displaced residents of this village. Even the families living on the road cross through the water now and then and are exposed to all sorts of water borne infections. Tejan confirmed that the younger mothers in her house needed health and medical support, especially the ones with small babies. They could not afford going to the roadside in a boat, let alone traveling some far distance to a hospital.

While proudly walking us through her house, Tejan stopped at a door. A door that once led to her backyard blooming with fresh vegetables. With tears in her eyes, she showed us how it was all under 8 to 10 feet of water. This house was once her sanctuary, a place she was proud of and where all her happy memories were lived. If given a choice, she would never leave this house but living in the current conditions was challenging. They were without clean water, food, clean clothes, a secure house and a livelihood. The walls of their house were leaking and most of their outer walls were totally damaged. The only thing still intact was their dignity and that they will not let go off.

[1] A traditional woven bed used across South Asia

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Pakistan has endured intense rainfall and severe monsoon weather since June 2022, causing catastrophic flooding and landslides across the country. As of 13 September 2022, an estimated 33 million people have been affected, with 6.4 million now requiring humanitarian assistance. Sindh has been hardest hit by the floods, with the southern province accounting for 88% of damaged or destroyed houses and the highest number of casualties.

While the severity and magnitude of the current crisis is extraordinary, the disaster-prone country
frequently experiences floods triggered by seasonal monsoon rains, with some of these events causing
major humanitarian crises. In 2010, floods submerged one-fifth of Pakistan’s land mass, directly affecting
20 million people.

The situation for people and families often worsens after a flood as survival forces unthinkable decisions
such as selling remaining possessions, relocating and withdrawing children from education. Early
information means people are able to make informed decisions about survival without compromising their recovery. Here are key lessons on communication, community engagement and accountability (CCEA) from past flood emergencies in Pakistan, along with recommendations for the current response. Please note that all recommendations must be adapted to the local context.

Download complete document

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Thirteen-year-old Luqman looks outside his window, their house surrounded by up to 10 feet of contaminated water at all sides. Luqman is the only boy in a house full of women in a far corner of a deserted village deep in flood water. The only way to access the house is in a boat that costs PKR 50 for one person, one way, from the main road. He must take care of his mother, his younger siblings, his aunts and grandmother who have been asked to stay in their flood-hit house to safeguard the honour of their Baloch family. The older men of the house have evacuated to safer grounds and in make-shift shelters on the canal banks and roadside in search of relief and in-kind assistance.

Luqman was a regular student at the Public Boys Schools in their neighbourhood in village Sayandad Alyari of Jhudo district, Sindh. He was studying in Grade 6 and was very proud of his academic accomplishments so far. Excitedly, he took out his last report card and showed it to us with gleaming eyes. Since monsoon rains hit Jhudo district in early June, the public school in their village has been shut down for two months now.

Missing his school days, his friends and even the homework he got, Luqman is growing more and more tired and frustrated in his house. He has no one to play with. All of his friends and relatives from the village have evacuated to the roadside while he is stuck in the water-guarded house. His mother and grandmother do not allow him to wander off outside the premises due to a growing number of snakes in the water around and a high probability of skin infections caused mainly from water contamination. Many children and people from their village are falling sick and catching skin infections.

Every day, Luqman hopes that somehow miraculously the water level around their house and in their village would go down and things would get back to normal. He wished to have a hot, scrumptious meal – with fresh roti and fully cooked, delicious curry or vegetables. He was only eating half-cooked meals which did not taste that great these days. The water that they use in cooking is dirty and they do not have enough fuel or fire wood to prepare meals properly. This is the reality that Luqman and many other flood-affected children are surviving on a day to day basis.

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Photo credit: www.dawn.com

The monsoon flooding in Pakistan continues to wreak havoc as 119 people have reportedly died in the last 24 hours, according to figures released by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), taking the total death toll from this natural calamity to 1,200. This year’s floods are being compared to that of 2010 – the worst on record– when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.

Thirty million people (about 15% of Pakistan’s total population) have been affected by the floods across the country so far, with ten million people left homeless, 800,000 livestock perished, one million houses completely washed away, over 200 bridges and roads collapsed and more than forty small dams breached since June 14th this year1. UNCOHA reports a total of 116 districts affected, including 66 districts officially declared ‘calamity hit’.

In Sindh province alone, the floods have killed more than 300 people. Along the narrow streets, people use whatever patch of dry ground is still available to pitch temporary shelter. In addition, almost 710,000 livestock are lost, and thousands of kilometres of roads and bridges destroyed. The floods have caused an earthquake-like destruction. Local communities in Sindh claim these rains as different – more intense than anything they have ever seen. One local official called them “floods of biblical proportions”2.

Mirpurkhas and Umerkot districts of Sindh were already severely affected by floods during the 2020 monsoons, which left agrarian communities at a huge loss of standing crops and agricultural property. People here had hardly started recovering from the shock of losing two cropping seasons, when their crops this year have again been completely destroyed. These communities are left with no option but to depend on humanitarian support for recovery and rehabilitation.

Impact of 2022 Floods in CWSA’s Project Area
District Partially Damaged Houses Completely Damaged Houses No. of Affected Union Councils Acres of Land Impacted Affected Population
Mirpurkhas 82,295 23,587 50 169,353 261,781
Umerkot 60,110 190 42 88,885 557,280

People from nearby districts such as Sanghar and Khairpur have also taken refuge in elevated areas in district Umerkot in addition to the district’s own population living on irrigated patches.  Affected communities from other districts are included in the number of displaced people recorded in Umerkot currently.

The rainfall received nationwide is 2.87 times higher than the national 30-year average, with some provinces receiving more than five times as much rainfall as their 30-year average. The climate minister, Sherry Rehman, said the country was going through its eighth monsoon cycle “while normally the country only has three to four cycles of rain”.

Millions are without food and shelter in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces, which have been most affected by this “climate change catastrophe”. People have lost their homes, their cattle, their lands and livelihoods and are now totally dependent on humanitarian assistance. Affected communities are in immediate need of clean drinking water, food, emergency medical assistance, and shelter. The poorest and most vulnerable are on the frontline of this crisis.

Pakistan is eighth on NGO Germanwatch’s global climate risk index, a list of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

We need your generous support to help flood-affected families and support them to rebuild their lives.

Community World Service Asia Response:

Community World Service Asia (CWSA) is in coordination with the local government and other stakeholders active in the area. Our emergency response team is closely monitoring the situation on the ground, is undertaking assessments and mobilising funds, preparing to start relief operations as soon as possible.

People in Umerkot ( a district where CWSA’s other humanitarian projects are already on-going) have been forced to abandon their homes as crops and livestock are washed away across the province.
Many sit with just beds – all their possessions lost to the water.
Millions of families are displaced amid the floods in Pakistan.
Thousands of marooned people are being evacuated by rescuers, aided by troops, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
The situation is worsening by the day. These torrential floods have severely restricted transportation and mobility.

Contacts:
Shama Mall
Deputy Regional Director
Programs & Organizational Development
Email: shama.mall@communityworldservice.asia
Tele: +92 21 34390541-4

Palwashay Arbab
Head of Communication
Email: palwashay.arbab@communityworldservice.asia
Tele: +92 21 34390541-4

Sources:
NDMA Report
UNOCHA Report
www.dailytimes.com.pk
www.ifrg.org
www.tribune.com.pk
www.guardian.com

  1. NDMA report Aug 29th
  2. Bbc news -Aug 29th.

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Many villages submerged in Sindh province in Pakistan after flash floods from Balochistan entered the province

More than 580 people have died (including 224 children and 114 women) and thousands have lost their homes across Pakistan as torrential rains hit the country. Widespread rain-thunderstorms with scattered heavy/very heavy falls, accompanied by occasional strong winds have struck districts Mirpurkhas and Umerkot of Sindh province, where a majority of Community World Service Asia’s humanitarian and development programs are focused. These extreme rains are critically affecting vulnerable communities already living in poverty and has damaged infrastructure in the area, with no electricity and limited communication access.

People in Umerkot have been forced to abandon their homes as crops and livestock are washed away across the province.

The flood-affected communities in Umerkot are in need of food, tents, clean drinking water, mosquito nets, ration bags and hygiene kits. A total of 1,860 houses have been damaged, affecting a population of 109,246 and displacing 18,207 men, women and children in Mirpurkhas and Umerkot.

An estimated 1 million people have been affected by heavy rainfall, flash floods and landslides since July as Pakistan endures more than 60% of its normal total monsoon rainfall in three weeks.

The worst-hit provinces include Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh, and Pakistan is expected to see severe rain until Friday (August 19th).

Hundreds of miles of roads have been damaged, making many areas in Umerkot inaccessible to emergency services.

Approximately 200 people have died in Balochistan – Pakistan’s biggest and poorest province – which is suffering its worst floods in more than 30 years. The National Disaster Management Authority said the province had received 305% more rain than the annual average.

Climate Change Minister of Pakistan said the climate catastrophe in Pakistan is “a national security crisis.” Pakistan is in the “middle of the food, climate, water, population and environmental crisis.” Pakistan has faced 152 extreme events in the last two decades with constant shifts in rainfall patterns, intensity and frequency. “We are also home to the hottest cities in the world for three years straight with temperatures rising up to 53.7C which is an unlivable situation,” added the Minister.

Families have lost their homes and belongings as a result of the Heavy rains and subsequent floods.

Community World Service Asia Response:

Community World Service Asia (CWSA) is in coordination with the local government and other stakeholders active in the area. Our emergency response team is closely monitoring the situation on the ground and will start relief operations immediately when required.

Contacts:
Shama Mall
Deputy Regional Director
Programs & Organizational Development
Email: hi2shama@cyber.net.pk
Tele: 92-21-34390541-4

Palwashay Arbab
Head of Communication
Email: palwashay.arbab@communityworldservice.asia
Tele: +92 42 35865338

Sources:
www.dailytimes.com.pk
NDMA
Reliefweb
Gulf news

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