This year’s monsoon season has unleashed deadly floods once again, of the kind we have been witnessing for the last three years. Since the floods of 2010, in which one fifth of the country was inundated with water and over 20 million people affected, we have been seeing a regular pattern of destruction and thousands of flood affected people every year. The torrential rains of 2013 are still going strong with forecasts indicating that there is no end in sight for the downpour for at least another 10 days. This is a recipe for disaster considering the damaging effects the rains have had this time around — more than 300,000 people have been affected, more than 100 have died and hundreds of thousands of acres of cropland have been ruined. The damage caused to the food industry is huge as market surveys are reporting that there is a real shortage of fruit and vegetables, hiking up the prices of these commodities to astounding highs. Entire villages have been inundated with their residents left homeless and, so far, without any hope for relief and rehabilitation. The authorities have promised compensation and relief for these victims of the rushing waters but that seems like a far-off dream for the many hundreds of thousands who have been waiting on such promises for the last three years.
If the mega flood of 2010 taught us anything it was that we are helpless in the face of Mother Nature. The government, whether in the past or the present, refuses to acknowledge the danger of allowing such overwhelming statistics to pile up. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has proved itself to be an utter failure in this regard as it has learned nothing. So far, only 20 relief camps have been set up from Multan to Muzaffargarh to accommodate the many hundreds of thousands who are crying for assistance. They reportedly are starving and lie under the open sky. The authorities’ negligence has resulted in zero preparation to deal with these yearly floods but now that they are here, what is being done to deal with the aftermath of the disaster? The answer seems to be absolutely nothing. Besides aerial surveillance of the damage caused to the croplands, what mobilisation can be seen on the ground? How are these flood waters being drained and how are the many people made homeless being sustained? We hear Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other prominent members of his government issue statements every day about how they intend to salvage the situation but the reality is very different. It is imperative that the government put its people to work. Perhaps a minister needs to be given charge of the disaster relief and management and be held accountable if things go wrong. Right now all we see is a hotchpotch strategy of verbally placating the public with no action being taken. At the very least, a parliamentary committee should be formed to investigate the negligence shown by the NDMA in the previous years and the steps that need to now be taken to bring things on track.
It is clear by now that we are facing erratic weather patterns due to climate change and global warming. Couple that with the effects of glacial melting in the Karokaram and Himalayan regions and it is little wonder that we are seeing these floods. Opportunistic elements can be heard blaming India for releasing flood waters but that is what any region or authority does when inundated with water. We are doing the same in different districts. This is not the time to indulge in jingoism; it is time to sit together and work with regional players to beat back this natural threat. Three years is a long enough time for preparation and a game plan. It is time the government and the NDMA did its job. *