JAMSHORO: Pakistan was scrambling on Tuesday to widen a breach in its biggest lake and prevent the waters from overflowing to swamp nearby towns, so worsening unprecedented floods that have inundated a third of the nation.
Waters brought by record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in northern mountains have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,325, including 466 children, National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) has said.
“We have widened the earlier breach at Manchar to reduce the rising water level,” Jam Khan Shoro, irrigation minister of Sindh, told Reuters late on Monday, referring to the lake, whose waters authorities seek to drain.
Already 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the effort to keep the lake from overflowing, an outcome that authorities fear could affect hundreds of thousands more.
“Till yesterday, there was enormous pressure on the dikes of Johi and Mehar towns, but people are fighting it out by strengthening the dikes,” district official Murtaza Shah said on Tuesday, adding that 80 percent to 90 percent of town’s people had already fled.
Those who remain are attempting to strengthen existing dikes with machinery provided by district officials.
The waters have turned the nearby town of Johi into a virtual island, as a dike built by locals holds back the water.
“After the breach at Manchar, the water has started to flow, earlier it was sort of stagnant,” one resident, Akbar Lashari, said by telephone, following Sunday’s initial breach of the freshwater lake.
The rising waters have also inundated the nearby Sehwan airport, civil aviation authorities said.
The floods have followed record-breaking summer heat, with the government and the United Nations both having blamed climate change for the extreme weather and the resulting devastation.
FOREIGN HELP
The relief effort is a huge burden for an economy already needing help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
A delegation of three US lawmakers, who visited the flood-hit areas on Sunday to assess the damage and explore ways of assisting Pakistan in its recovery efforts, met Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday, his office said.
Sharif told the lawmakers that given the challenges and enormous resources involved in the reconstruction efforts, “continued support, solidarity and assistance from the international community was critical,” the office said.
The United Nations has called for $160 million in aid to help the flood victims but Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said the damage was far higher.
“The total damage is close to $10 billion, perhaps more,” Ismail said in an interview with CNBC.
“Clearly it is not enough. In spite of meagre resources Pakistan will have to do much of the heavy lifting.”
Nevertheless, help kept pouring in with the foreign ministry reporting arrivals of relief flights on Monday from the United Nations and individual countries, including Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Elsewhere in the region, floods are also threatening crisis-hit Sri Lanka, while rains have disrupted life in India’s technology hub, Bengaluru.
The northern summer is the rainy season across much of Asia.
