Tearfund’s Country Director, Jonathan Johnson, in Pakistan anticipates that thousands more people will be in dire need of humanitarian assistance in the coming weeks.
“Tearfund is providing emergency food for the next two weeks to more than 2,000 households, as well as blankets, kitchen utensils and hygiene items. We have seen tremendous losses and damage in the northern part of the country, with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan most affected. With heavy rains expected over the next two weeks the situation is likely to worsen significantly and may leave thousands of households in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
“Fearing the worst, many people have fled their homes to go to higher ground and remain exposed to the elements and cut off from their belongings. The country has not yet recovered from the 2022 floods and can ill afford any disaster approaching the magnitude we are seeing now. Tearfund and its partners are already working to deal with the aftermath of harsh monsoon rains in Punjab, Khaber, Paktoonkhaw, Gilgit-Baltistan, and the urban slums of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.”
According to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), cumulative losses and damages since the monsoon rains began include 657 fatalities and 929 injuries, 778 houses fully damaged and 1,684 houses partially damaged, 451 kms of roads damaged and 999 livestock lost.
Meanwhile, earlier this year in the south of the country, people in Sindh province in the south of Pakistan experienced droughts threatening crops and livelihood losses so severe that Tearfund’s new drought insurance plan triggered. This innovative funding model provided anticipatory funding to be able to make sure worst case scenarios can be avoided. Extremes in weather make Pakistan among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, despite the country having contributed less than 1% of overall global greenhouse gas emissions.
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