Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal Wednesday said, the federal government has directed the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to jointly conduct a damage assessment survey of recent heavy rains and flash floods across the country. All provincial governments and Pakistan Army would fully support the NDMA to conduct the survey to expedite the rescue and relief activities in the flood hit areas of the country, the minister said while addressing a press briefing along withe Chairman NDMA, Lt. General Akhtar Nawaz. The minister said, the NDMA would conduct a joint survey with the help of all provinces to assess the real damage incurred to the houses and the people across the country.

For this purpose, he said the federal government had offered every type of support to the provinces withoutany political differences. Further he said that after the survey, the presentation of the total losses would be presented to the multilateral partners such as World Bank to receive help from the international institutions. Chairman NDMA said some 630 people had been died and 1130 people were injured until now 630 people died, 1130 people inured due to recent rains and flash floods. Moreover, he said 1.087 million people were directly or indirectly affected from the rains, 72,500 houses were damaged and 1.011 million animals were affected. This year, he said on average, the country faced 150% more than average rainfall.

Balochistan was the worst hit province which received 280% more rains followed by Sindh that received 228% extra rains. However he said Kashmir received less than average rainfall during the Monsoon season. He informed that 98% of Tarbela Dam had been filled to its capacity while only 38% of Mangla dam had so far been filled due to less rains in the catchment areas. The NDMA Chairman maintained that three districts of Balochistan including Lasbela, Jhal Magsi and Jafarabad were badly hit by the rains, three from Punjab including Mianwali, DG Khan, Rajanpur, three from Sindh including Dadoo, Sajawal and Thatha, and four from KP including DI Khan, Tank, Laki Marwat, Kohistan and Charsada.

Credit:
Independent News Pakistan-INP