China and Canada lead foreign aid as losses estimated at £8.58bn
PAKISTAN will likely take five years to rebuild and rehabilitate the country following the devastating floods, its planning minister has said.
Early estimates put the damage from the recent deadly floods at more than $10 billion (£8.58bn), Ahsan Iqbal said in an interview on Monday (29), adding that the world has an obligation to help the country cope with the effects of man-made climate change.
Iqbal described the situation a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions”.
“I think it is going to be huge. So far, (a) very early, preliminary estimate is that it is big, it is higher than $10bn,” he said.
“So far we have lost 1,000 human lives. There is damage to almost nearly one million houses.
“People have actually lost their complete livelihood.”
It might take five years to rebuild and rehabilitate the nation, while in the near term it will be confronted with acute food shortages, he added.
To mitigate food shortfalls, finance minister Miftah Ismail said the country could consider importing vegetables from India.
The neighbours have not had any trade for a long time. “We can consider importing vegetables from India,” Ismail told local Geo News TV, adding other possible sources of food imports included Turkey and Iran.
Food prices have already shot up due to flooded crops and impassable roads.
India’s prime minister Narendra Modi said that he was saddened by the devastation caused by the floods.
Southern, southwestern and northern Pakistan have been the hardest hit by the floods, which have swept large swaths of farmland and stored crops, also isolating the regions from rest of the country for the last several days.
Pakistan has appealed for international help and some countries have already sent in supplies and rescue teams.
The Chinese government said on Monday (29) it will provide additional humanitarian aid, including $300,000 (£257,337) in cash and 25,000 tents. China had already sent 4,000 tents, 50,000 blankets and 50,000 waterproof tarps to Pakistan.
China’s president Xi Jinping also called his Pakistani counterpart Arif Alvi to express his condolences on the flooding, according to Chinese state media.
The Canadian government on Monday announced $5 million (£4.28m) in funding for humanitarian assistance to Pakistan to deal with the flooding.
Iqbal said any formal requests for financial help would need to wait until the scale of the damage was known, something Pakistan was now evaluating with partners, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
He also said the world owed Pakistan, which was a victim of climate change caused by the “irresponsible development of the developed world.”
“Our carbon footprint is lowest in the world,” he said. “The international community has a responsibility to help us, upgrade our infrastructure, to make our infrastructure more climate resilient, so that we don’t have such losses every three, four, five years,” he added.
“Those areas which used to receive rainfall aren’t receiving rainfall and those areas which used to receive very mild rains are receiving very heavy rainfall.”
Iqbal said 45 per cent of cotton crops had been washed away with early wheat sowing in southern Pakistan also affected, as large swaths of land remained inundated with flood water, and severe damage to rice fields as well as vegetable and fruit crops.
Pakistan’s finance ministry in its latest economic outlook update has warned of the impact on critical seasonal crops, particularly cotton.