Daily Times

Balochistan Minister for Agriculture and Cooperative, Mir Asadullah Baloch Sunday appreciated Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s announcement of Rs. 10 billion aid for the province, however he demanded to raise the money as the estimated overall loss faced by Balochistan stands around Rs. 300 billion.

Talking to APP, Asadullah Baloch demanded the federal government and donor agencies to come forward and help the provincial government in rehabilitation of flood affectees as out of estimated Rs. 300 billion loss, the agriculture sector alone faced Rs. 150 billion loss.

The provincial minister said that people of Balochistan were hit by worst natural calamity in the history and were looking for the help from federal government, philanthropists and NGOs to mitigate their sufferings as Balochistan was the second worst affected province after Sindh. “The volume of calamity is colossal and we do not have enough resources to fight it, compensate affected population, rehabilitation and restore the damaged infrastructure,” he added.

He said that the federal government should take practical steps to assess the damages and provide aid to poor homeless people who were displaced from the flash floods in the province.

Terming the developed world responsible for the climate change, the minister said that the industrial and developed countries should come forward for the help as they are responsible for the climate change and its impacts.

The provincial government was taking measures to identify the losses and damages besides initiating rehabilitation of the people on war footing basis, the minister added. He demanded the federal government to announce subsidy on electricity and gas bills, provision of free yields, acquittal of agricultural loan, provision of tractors on subsidize rates and provide bulldozer’s hours to the farmers to bear the losses.

Giving details about the agricultural losses, he said that almost overall seasonal crops including tomato, chilli, onion, rice, cotton, apple and dates standing on over 200,000 acres land had been destroyed completely. He said the flood has badly affected the farmers, caused loss of over 500,000 livestock and destroyed their tube wells and solar panels.

“The flash floods have washed away embankments on 5,000,000 acres land which would require 1,000,000 bulldozers hours and 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 hours of trackers for rebuilding the mound and flatting the land.

He said the abnormal heavy rains and floods badly affected the communication system and destroyed 1000 kilometers roads and many bridges in the province that caused major difficulties for the administration to reach out all affected areas. The survey of the collapsed houses, destroyed crops and perished cattles would help the government to prepare a comprehensive plan for their compensations.

He urged the government to chalk out a plan to form long-term policies and preparing people for disaster preparedness aimed to minimize the risks of natural calamities in future. Balochistan Minister for Agriculture and Cooperative, Mir Asadullah Baloch said that even though medical camps had been organized to provide free medical treatment in the flood hit areas yet concrete steps were required to prevent the spread of epidemics.