Daily Times

There is this 15-year-old boy somewhere in an urban area of Pakistan who has this routine of getting up in the morning, he freshens up, takes his breakfast, and rushing to school where he spends the whole day in classes doing studies and he comes back in the afternoon, takes a nap and again starts studying after waking up. He either goes to a nearby mosque for Quran class or his teacher would come to his home for teaching him Quran. In the evening he gets some time to spend with his family and he sleeps after having dinner and having done his homework. This is the same sort of routine in most urban areas of the country but if this kid is in Southern Punjab, Baluchistan, or in Swat areas of KPK, the routines have changed for everyone during the last couple of months. Students of these areas don’t get up to go to school for studies; they get up to go through another day of survival. Most of them sleep under the open skies with thousands of mosquitos and insects roaming around here and there. Most of them have been struck with viral diseases but there are no medical facilities to take care of them.

The U.N. estimates 33 million people have felt the effects of the deadly floods, which have killed more than a thousand people and displaced 7.9 million people since June. The education sector has been severely impacted by the recent flood and rain emergency. At least 25,993 schools have been damaged or destroyed in the region of Sindh, Baluchistan, Punjab, and KP due to the floods with data collection still ongoing. In addition, more than 7,062 schools that were not damaged have turned into relief camps to provide shelter to the flood aff¬ected population. The use of schools as temporary shelters for displaced people is disrupting schooling and the ongoing academic year and is expected to cause loss of learning materials and further damage to education infrastructure including WASH facilities, requiring cleaning and renovation later. Based on current estimations, more than 3.5 million children have had their education interrupted due to the destruction all over the country. In addition, teaching and learning materials including books, copies, blackboards, tables, and other educational furniture worth millions of rupees have been completely destroyed as well. 35% of schools across Sindh, Baluchistan, and KPK have either been partially or fully damaged. Sindh has been the most affected with 79% of the damages.

The scale of the damage we are seeing will prevent thousands of children from going back to school any time soon. We’ve seen entire buildings completely washed away. After two years of COVID-19 pandemic school closures, children once again risk further disruption to their learning, in areas where one-third of girls and boys were already out-of-school before the crisis. Restoring access to learning through Temporary Learning Centers and other modalities would mitigate the impact of interruption of education services, provide a safe space and better protection for children, and assist in providing a sense of normalcy. Despite the overwhelming need, education remains underfunded. So far only USD 5 million has been committed by ECW for supporting the education sector flood response of the USD 10.2 million needed for immediate emergency response.

Whenever there is a natural disaster, the results are catastrophic. Humanity suffers and the magnitude and scales of the disasters are often calculated and worked on for prevention in the coming years. Pakistan is one of the countries where no such practice is followed. Every other year we face floods, fog, and smog. We lose lives, we lose live stocks, we face sufferings we face pain, the government and Non-government institutions rush for rescue and help and we prepare ourselves for a new kind of disaster the next year. Aiding agencies across the globe do play their part in the restoration of the affected but all of these Donor agencies including the UN have never taken any concrete steps to work on the reasons for these frequent human disasters that happen across the globe at regular intervals. The so-called civilized or industrially modern countries have destroyed the atmosphere with their industrial surge. The Ozone layer has been destroyed; the natural cycle of seasons has been disrupted. The third world and underdeveloped countries are paying a heavy price for this industrial revolution as they face floods, wildfires, torrential rains, and a changing cycle of weather. Global warming has taken the entire universe by storm but the world has to determine the countries responsible for this. The UN and these developed countries have to come forward and take steps to curb global warming and industrialization which is playing havoc with the lives of human beings across the world.

In an agricultural country like Pakistan, growing up kid we used to learn from our grandparents that there are different kinds of beautiful butterflies; we used to hear stories of different monsters that devastate humanity but are ultimately controlled by “the wise man.” We would hear stories of people going for morning walks barefooted on the grass and would ultimately have the best eyesight. We would see on TV that there are these different kinds of birds that would migrate from one country to another according to the different seasons. I used to listen during the bedtime stories that district Sargodha, where I come from used to host a large number of these migrating Siberian birds who would end up beautifying the atmosphere with their beautiful voices and presence. We were told about the birds who would fly in groups from one place to another in the morning for their food and return in the evenings having their bellies filled. Ever since I have grown up I have a feeling that all of these stories have just been stories from our forefathers. I have not seen a group of birds flying about early in the morning or returning in the evenings. I dearly miss the sounds of all these migrating birds, I do not see different colorful butterflies roaming around. I miss the trees and greenery that our grandparents used to mention in their stories.

The way I see it, we the current generation who have had the pleasure of studying at safer places must act now and travel to these places and help out the students of these areas with whatever is possible. I along with my friends and had the chance to visit the flood-affected areas of Taunsa Sharif. We witnessed precarious conditions there. Schools were destroyed and kids were left with nothing to study from. Now we have to act as the “Wise Man” and must prioritize our line of action after this monstrous disaster. Education has been badly affected during the last 5 years first by Covid-19 and now by these severe floods. The government and the social sector must put in their efforts to normalize the education sector. The educational emergency has to be declared right away. Mobile educational units have to be set up so that the kids in these affected areas can be provided with educational facilities. Every country and every organization has got its own agendas, so why don’t we make “Education & Awareness” our agenda and work on it not only at the government level but at the social level as well? We have to make a decision right now we want the next generations to go through even worse situations than us or can we do something for ourselves and our future? We have to believe that we can save our world and especially Pakistan by using technological advancements and providing learning facilities to the areas where life has become seriously tough after the floods. We have to make an environment where every kid gets up in the morning and goes to school rather than go through a day full of suffering & pain and no schooling.