Pakistan's prime minister said yesterday that 20 million people had been affected by the worst floods in the country's history as fears of disease, including cholera, grow. The country's independence day celebrations were cancelled and aid agencies warned of a "second wave" of deaths from disease.
"I would appeal to the world community to extend a helping hand to fight this calamity," Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani said in a televised address. Last night, Pakistan's Abu Dhabi-based ambassador-at-large, Javed Malik, joined the country's consul general at an independence day iftar in Sharjah where Pakistanis donated Dh450,000 to help the flood victims. "The mood is sombre rather than celebratory," Mr Malik said. "But it is an important day for us."
His role, he said, was to rally the community to give. "There is no specific target for the amount we want to raise, whatever can be given is welcome." In Dubai yesterday, the consul general of Pakistan, Amjad Ali Sher, urged Pakistanis to donate anything they can to a relief account the consulate has opened in the UAE. In Islamabad, a high-level delegation from the UAE Red Crescent Authority met with their Pakistani counterparts as part of efforts to secure urgent relief, according to WAM, the state news agency.
The UAE Pakistani community marked 63 years of independence yesterday with appeals for support for their country. At a flag-raising ceremony at the consulate in Dubai, Mr Sher said it was the "moral and national duty" of each of the 1.25 million Pakistani expatriates in the UAE to "reach out to their flood-affected brethren". "This flood is unprecedented in 100 years of Pakistan and there are predictions that more flooding is expected in the coming days."
A ceremony was also held in Abu Dhabi where a flag was unfurled by Khursheed Ahmed Junejo, Pakistan's ambassador to the UAE. UN officials are increasingly concerned that aid shortages could lead to deaths from disease and starvation. They said cholera and several other potentially lethal waterborne and insect-spread diseases - including acute diarrhoea, dengue fever, malaria and typhoid - pose a serious threat.
Because of the crisis, Pakistan cancelled celebrations yesterday marking its creation and independence from Britain in 1947. President Asif Ali Zardari met with flood victims in the north-west, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was expected to arrive this weekend. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) described the food situation in flooded areas as "critical". The WFP has so far delivered basic one-month food rations to nearly 430,000 people, but has received only US$37.5 million of the $156.2m needed to meet its target of feeding two million people by Friday, which it is unlikely to achieve.
People in many flooded areas, notably in the western province of Balochistan, are yet to receive any relief goods because roads and bridges have been destroyed. Their plight is becoming increasingly desperate, with people fighting for limited supplies of food and clean drinking water. Pakistani newspapers reported that starving people in Muzaffargarh, a central district flooded by the Indus and Chenab rivers, had been attacking and robbing convoys of lorries on Friday.
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