The floods triggered by the ongoing spell of rains have proved one thing— that Pakistani institutions had never learnt from their past mistakes. The National Disaster Management Authority and other institution did prove the same this year as well.
The senate special committee in its meeting on Tuesday went the extra mile and observed that the present natural calamity and the failure of the NDMA and other state institutions was just the tip of an iceberg, suggesting that that the whole system of the country was crumbling. Syed Sajjad Hassan Zaidi, a senator from the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional severely slammed the government and said the government and its institutions had failed to learn from the last year’s devastating floods.
This criticism is not new. The performance of NDMA is clear to all. The PDMA, which is provincial chapter of the NDMA, had made a contingency plan for 2011 but it skipped many Sindh districts and did not held any surveys there. The UN also accused the national institution for its failure to make arrangements in time and its faulty planning. The low-lying areas near the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) had been completely ignored by the PDMA. Its planning and assessment of damages were also faulty and hence no emergency assistance could be delivered there properly.
The NDMA should have made a coordinated plan with the involvement of the UN, all state emergency institutions and relevant departments of the province. But that did not happen since our departments are known to call for help when things go beyond their control. The UN had asked in the beginning that it should formally be request if the institutions needed help, but the NDMA did not pay any heed until it was too late.
Apart from contingency planning and precautionary measures, the emergency response was also another failure of the government institution. The senators were particularly concern in that regard. Zaidi said that nepotism needed to be eliminated as no system could work properly otherwise. He also accused politicians including National Assembly members and ministers.
“MNA Nafisa Shah, who is also the daughter of Qaim Ali Shah, was responsible for the flood response but she never asked any lawmakers regarding flood assistance in their areas. Perhaps her area of concern is merely the NGO she is running”, Zaidi observed. He said a mutkhtar-e-kar had been transferred because of his corruption but former MNA Javed Shah got him reinstated again in the same area.
Senator Ishaq Dar endorsed Zaidi’s concerns and said most of the officials were corrupt and incompetent.