National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal Qadir on Wednesday said that a comprehensive monsoon contingency plan has been devised to cope with any untoward situation in case of floods.
Addressing at a press conference here, he said that the plan was devised in consultation with all stakeholders, including provincial governments, local administration, NGOs, UN agencies and provincial disaster management authorities. He said that civil institutions have prepared a comprehensive plan for monsoon season for the first time by taking on board all stakeholders. The chairman said that the country received 50 per cent low rains during July whereas it had been predicted that there would be 5-15 per cent more rains from July 15 to September.
He said: “The NDMA has no mechanism to predict rains, but we have to depend on the data and forecast made by the Met Department. Zafar said that directives have been issued to the district administrations besides assigning respective duties to the departments concerned in emergency.
In case of floods, safe areas have been identified and local administrations had already chalked out transport plans to shift the local people to safe places, he said and added that emergency centres were also made operational.
The chairman said that there was need of over 400,000 tents and the NDMA has stock of 104,000 tents in stock. However, tent manufactures had given the assurance that they had enough stock and could provide the required tents as 10,000 tents could be manufactured per day.
Replying to a question, Zafar said that Khyber-Pakhunkhwa and Balochistan governments had allocated Rs 7 billion and Rs 3 billion, respectively, to cope with flood situation in emergency. He said that Punjab and Sindh were also asked to set aside Rs 5 billion each in this regard. To another question, he said that the provincial governments had focussed on those districts which were badly affected during the floods in 2010 and 2011.
In response to a question, he said the pre and post-flood plans had already been finalised.
Representatives of PDMAs Sindh, KPK, Balochistan, FATA, AJK and GB were also present on the occasion.