Article printed in the Pakistani publication The News by Ameer Bhutto, a Pakistani politician.
THE FLOOD AND THE FUTURE
By Ameer Bhutto
Article printed in
The News
on 26 August 2010
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has described the devastation caused by floods in Pakistan as the greatest disaster in world history. The impact of lives lost can not be assessed by numbers alone and damage to property is bound to soar into unfathomable figures. The plight of the displaced flood victims is harrowing. They are camped out under the blazing sun on elevated roadsides, rooftops or hillocks, surrounded by the raging waters. Some have been stranded in treetops for many days. Food and clean water are in short supply and many go for days without eating. The flood water they are constrained to drink is polluted by, among other things, dead animals because of which cholera, gastroentitus, malaria, diarrhea, hepatitis and skin diseases are rampant. With tens of millions suffering under such subhuman conditions, it is clear that intervention on an unprecedented scale is required otherwise people will start dying from starvation and diseases in numbers that do not even bear contemplation.
Rehabilitation of the displaced is a task of mammoth proportions.
Since most schools in many towns are full of flood victims, these schools can not reopen until they return to their homes. But most of them have nothing left and nowhere to return to, their homes having been swept away and their limited means of livelihood, in most cases this being the standing crops, having been destroyed. How will they even begin to rebuild their lives? But their lives have to be rebuilt, because otherwise, in the coming days, we will have an army of millions on our hands who will have no choice but to take to crime in order to feed their families. Grain must be imported to make up for the destroyed crops and the damaged roads, railway tracks and power generating units and grid stations must be rebuilt forthwith. The country will suffer the economic after effects of this calamity for years to come.
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