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Recovery from floods to take Pakistan years
Source: Agencies |
August 24, 2010, Tuesday
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PAKISTAN could take years to recover from the floods disaster, its president said, as crisis talks began with the IMF which predicted the catastrophe would have a "major and lasting" economic impact.
An official in the province of Sindh said today that up to 600,000 people were now in danger from rising flood waters in the south, nearly a month into a calamity that has affected a third of the country and cast some 4 million from their homes.
"We are strengthening embankments but 500,000 to 600,000 people in low-lying areas are still in danger and we are trying to persuade them to leave their areas," Sindh's irrigation minister, Jam Saifullah Dherjo, told Reuters.
Flood victims are seething over what they say is their government's sluggish response to the floods which have wiped out villages, bridges, roads, crops, livestock and livelihoods.
Pakistan faces the daunting challenges of securing enough aid for relief efforts, making sure militants don't take advantage of the catastrophe to gain recruits and figuring out ways to dull long-term economic pain resulting from the floods.
A senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said after the first day of economic talks with Pakistani officials that the country faced hard choices on how to allocate scarce resources for rebuilding.
Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department, said in a Reuters interview that while the catastrophe was still unfolding, it was clear the floods will have "a major and lasting impact" on a economy that was fragile before the floods struck.
An official in the province of Sindh said today that up to 600,000 people were now in danger from rising flood waters in the south, nearly a month into a calamity that has affected a third of the country and cast some 4 million from their homes.
"We are strengthening embankments but 500,000 to 600,000 people in low-lying areas are still in danger and we are trying to persuade them to leave their areas," Sindh's irrigation minister, Jam Saifullah Dherjo, told Reuters.
Flood victims are seething over what they say is their government's sluggish response to the floods which have wiped out villages, bridges, roads, crops, livestock and livelihoods.
Pakistan faces the daunting challenges of securing enough aid for relief efforts, making sure militants don't take advantage of the catastrophe to gain recruits and figuring out ways to dull long-term economic pain resulting from the floods.
A senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said after the first day of economic talks with Pakistani officials that the country faced hard choices on how to allocate scarce resources for rebuilding.
Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department, said in a Reuters interview that while the catastrophe was still unfolding, it was clear the floods will have "a major and lasting impact" on a economy that was fragile before the floods struck.
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