UN secures more aid for Pak
Nearly half the $459 million needed to fund initial relief efforts following Pakistan’s worst ever floods has been secured after days of lobbying donors and warnings that the country faces a spiralling humanitarian catastrophe, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
But despite the fresh funds, only a small minority of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received help after floods that have killed up to 1,600 people and left two million homeless.
“There has been an improvement in funding. Donors are realising the scale of the disaster,” UN spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said, “but the challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over.”
“The size of (the area affected by) this disaster is equivalent to Austria, Switzerland and Belgium combined. That’s pretty scary.” A few days ago, only a quarter of aid pledged had been received, prompting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to urge donors to speed up.
So far food rations and access to clean water have only been provided to around 7,00,000 flood survivors. The International Organisation for Migration said there were still about 7,00,000 households without shelter.
Hundreds of villages are isolated, highways and bridges have been cut in half by floods and hundreds of thousands of cattle — the livelihood of many villagers — have drowned.
LeT, JeM set up flood relief camps
Banned militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, blamed for terror strikes in India, have set up camps in Karachi to raise funds to help victims of the worst ever deluge sweeping Pakistan, PTI reports.
Officebearers of the groups said the ban imposed on them has compelled them to work under different names. The groups claim they have collected millions of rupees for flood victims.
