The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is responsible for escalating the looses caused by the flooding in Sindh and converting the situation into a disaster as it did not let the world humanitarian assistance intervene into the crisis until the president and the prime minister took notice of the situation, an official source in the United Nations confided to Pakistan Today on Saturday.
The recent floods in Sindh have been devastating which, according to the NDMA estimates, affected four to five million people and killed 132 demolishing 70,000 houses and damaging crop on over 1.7 million acres of land. “We were cognizant of the fact that the NDMA will not be able to cope with the disaster, so we offered our assistance in the initial days of flood in the province, but the NDMA told us to stay away and did not let us intervene into the crisis,” the official said, adding that the delay let the Sindh flood convert into a disaster.
He said the United Nations received two requests from the government of Pakistan asking for assistance for the flood victims in collaboration with the NDMA. “The requests were made by the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) in which the UN was asked to coordinate with the NDMA for assistance but we were told that the NDMA was completely capable to cope with the floods. The last letter of the EAD to the UN was sent on September 6 by Joint Secretary Muhammad Anwar Shaikh requesting for food assistance to the flood victims and launching an international appeal for them,” the official said, adding that if the NDMA had not resisted the international assistance, the losses could have been minimised. He said the UN was now starting its operations on the intervention of the president and the prime minister.
“Despite the intervention of the president and the prime minister, the international humanitarian organisations are still facing resistance from the NDMA,” the official said. He also said the NDMA despite being aware that it would not be able to control the losses let the damages escalate and now its ability stood exposed. Asked why the NDMA had been resisting, the official said the authority wanted its sole control over all operations in the flood-hit areas and, perhaps, sought direct cash flow from the international community.
“You know that the international assistance is always multilateral and provided mostly through UN or some other organisations. The UN has its own system of work to carry out its humanitarian assistance which is quite different from that of the public sector, so direct cash assistance was not possible”, the official added. When NDMA spokesman and Member Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Ahmed Kamal was contacted, he asked Pakistan Today to contact NDMA Chairman Zafar Qadir on the issue. But the chairman did not receive the calls.
