KARACHI – Another devastating landslide on the pattern of Attabad is on the offing in Hunza Valley, while Balochistan may suffer from moderate to severe drought in coming years. Similarly, there is a visible earthquake fault line passing through the Chaman town of Balochistan but no building codes or other precautionary measures are being adopted to mitigate the effects in case of a jolt in future.
These revelations were made during the course of discussion at the 5th meeting of the National Oversight Disaster Management Council (NODMC) held on 7th February, 2011, at the committee room of the Cabinet Division in Islamabad. According to the minutes of the said meeting available with Pakistan Today, the delay and negligence in repairing the river breaches in Sindh was also come under discussion.
The council members said it appeared that the federating units were not fully satisfied with the way relief and early recovery and the USAID projects had been planned and being executed in the provinces, despite clear instructions from National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) that the no-objection certificate (NOC) from the provinces was a must for the NGOs, INGOS and other foreign agencies besides the same from the Pakistan Floods Emergency, Relief and Early Recovery Response Plan (PFERRP).
It was further pointed out that the effort on the whole appeared to be fragmented and a full picture of post flood activities was not available with any of the ministry or authority. It also suggested assigning the coordination of entire gamut of post-flood activities to the NDMA/NDMC where maximum information and vertical infrastructure for the purpose is well in place.
All the provincial irrigation secretaries informed that they had already prepared and submitted the plans for restoration of respective the irrigation system and filling of cuts in the flood protective dykes along the Indus River to the respective governments but no funds had so far been allocated or released for the purpose.
