As Pakistan struggles to cope with the humanitarian aftermath of vast floods earlier in the year, the country’s prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, on Wednesday urged the international community to give his country desperately needed aid to help 20 million flood victims survive the harsh winter.
The appeal for help in arranging food, tents and other essential items for the millions of people displaced by the deadly floods by the Prime Minister is coming ahead of an international donors conference scheduled to hold in Geneva on Jan. 9, 2023.
“Even today, 20 million victims of the floods need urgent humanitarian assistance,” Sharif said in televised comments during a visit to Kot Diji in the southern province of Sindh, an area that was left highly devastated by the inundations.
The rains which triggered unprecedented floods that at one point submerged a third of the country’s territory came at a time when cash-strapped Pakistan was already facing a severe financial crisis.
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Despite having a negligible share in global carbon emissions, Sharif maintained Pakistan was suffering from climate change-induced floods which is a common phenomenon in developing countries.
The U.N. in Geneva will co-host the “International Conference on Climate Resilient Pakistan” to raise much-needed funds for the victims of last summer’s wide-ranging floods that killed 1,739 people, destroyed 2.2 million homes and affected 33 million Pakistanis.
Sharif said he plans to travel to Switzerland to lay out for the world community the ordeal of the flood victims, tens of thousands of whom are still living in open areas adding that nine million children are among those flood survivors who were “desperately waiting for help” and his government was trying to help flood victims with its limited resources.
As the snow has started falling in some of the flood-hit areas in the northwest and southwestern Baluchistan province, it is piling up more misery to the plight of flood survivors, he said.
Sharif claimed Pakistan’s government was using all its resources to ensure that flood victims returned to normal life by rebuilding destroyed homes and communities. Many flood survivors have returned to their villages in recent weeks.
The floods also destroyed much of the country’s crops. Pakistan says the inundations caused up to $40 billion in damages to its economy.
Story was adapted from AP.
