Flood aftermath

Other certainties

Predictably, diseases have started breaking out in flood-hit areas across the country. And typically, the National Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Network (NHEPRN) ‘lacks financial resources to tackle any possible disease outbreak’ in these areas. That means that the Network is not equipped to perform the function it was created to perform, which speaks volumes about the government’s priorities, especially considering the staggering sums allocated to large projects that a big proportion of the population will never benefit from. And, apparently, provincial governments, too, have ‘limited resources’, hence the official helplessness as diarrhea, dysentery, malaria, gastroenteritis, etc, ravage thousands on the run from the floods.

But wasn’t the 18^th amendment meant to empower provinces politically as well as financially? Wasn’t dealing with, and preparing for, disasters like flash floods – and allocating appropriate funds for them – placed squarely under provincial jurisdiction? What, after all, is the purpose of provincial disaster management authorities, except for approaching the federal government for more funds? And what of the funds that, according to the press, the government doled out last time but have sat idle? Obviously they were not used to upgrade the warning system, at least. Nor to prepare for just this type of inevitability – disease born of displacement and flood water – obviously.

Those with slightly long memories will remember how dengue, which is expected to break out again, and gastro played havoc with human lives not too long ago. Even though, from the look of things, the thousands that died did not leave a strong enough impression on the government, the people at large are rightly concerned about their immediate future, especially with fresh flood warnings. Since the floods are now more or less a cyclical certainty, perhaps the government should consider giving them due importance, not the least because thousands, if not millions, of lives are affected every other year. And the less said about the damage done to the economy, the better. The government must do a better job of not only preparing for floods, abut also dealing with their rather predictable aftermath.