Agencies-Gaza post
Pakistan needs more than $10 billion for rebuilding after floods
Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ihsan Iqbal said Tuesday that his country needs more than $10 billion to repair and rebuild infrastructure damaged by devastating floods caused by heavy monsoon rains.
“There has been enormous damage to infrastructure, especially communications, roads, agriculture and livelihoods,” he told AFP.
A third of Pakistan’s territory is under water after the worst monsoon rains in three decades.
The floods killed at least 1,136 people and destroyed vital agricultural lands.
These floods affected more than 33 million people, one Pakistani out of every seven, while about one million homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
The Pakistani government declared a state of emergency and mobilized the army to confront what the Minister of Climate Change, Sherry Rahman, described as a “huge catastrophe”, with the National Disaster Management Authority announcing, on Sunday, that the death toll from monsoon rains this year reached 1,033.
The authority revealed that this year’s floods are parallel to those that occurred in 2010, which is the worst ever, when more than two thousand people died and about a fifth of the country was inundated with water.
According to officials, the monsoon rains this year affected more than 33 million people, or one person out of every seven in Pakistan, destroying or causing severe damage to about one million homes, and the floods caused many roads to be cut off, and power outages in many areas.
Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in northern Pakistan after a rapidly rising river inundated a major bridge while deadly floods wreaked havoc across the country.
Disaster response officials said fears of flooding around the river banks had prompted nearly 180,000 people in Charsadda district to flee their homes, with some spending the night on highways with their livestock.
