The Government says that more than 10,000 million euros will be needed to recover the infrastructures
Relief efforts intensified in Pakistan on Tuesday to try to help the tens of millions of people affected by the worst monsoon rains in three decades, which inundated a third of the country, killed at least 1,136 people and caused multimillion-dollar damage.
The Planning Minister, Ahsan Iqbal, put the infrastructure losses at more than 10,000 million euros. “There has been massive damage, especially in the areas of telecommunications, roads, agriculture and livelihoods,” he said. The rains began in June and have caused deadly floods, destroying crops vital for the survival of its population and destroying more than a million homes.
The authorities and humanitarian organizations are trying to speed up the delivery of aid to the more than 33 million people affected, one in seven Pakistanis, but the task is complicated by the damage to roads and bridges. The UN and the Government, which decreed a state of emergency, officially launched this Tuesday an appeal for 160 million euros to finance emergency aid.
Hardly any dry land remains in the south and west of the country, and displaced people must take refuge on elevated roads and railways to escape the flood plains. “We don’t even have space to cook food. We need help,” Rimsha Bibi, a schoolgirl in Dera Ghazi Khan, in central Pakistan, told AFP.
The monsoon, which usually lasts from June to September, is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing water resources in the Indian subcontinent. It also has its share of tragedy and destruction every year, although it has been three decades since the country has seen such intense rainfall.
Climate change
The Pakistani authorities attribute these devastating rains to climate change and claim that the country is suffering the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices in other parts of the world.
The monsoon rains that began in June are “unprecedented for thirty years,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said as he toured the affected areas in the north. A third of Pakistan is currently “underwater,” Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told AFP on Monday, citing a “crisis of unimaginable proportions.” you can pump the water,” he said, adding that the economic cost will be devastating.
The balance may increase because the authorities are still trying to reach the remote mountainous areas of the north. And in the south, the Indus River, the most important in the country, threatens to overflow its banks.
According to the weather service, Pakistan received double the normal rainfall. In the southern provinces of Balochistan and Sindh, the most affected, the rains were four times higher than the average of the previous thirty years. The floods come at the worst time for Pakistan, whose economy is facing a serious crisis.
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