A harsh and uncompromising winter is staring the flood affected people in the eye in the high altitude regions as well as the plains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where, as elsewhere in the country, unprecedented floods have left a trail of destruction along its trail. The deluge not only played havoc with the people’s lives, it also rendered millions of people without any provisions. And, the approaching winter is surely going to compound miseries of the homeless people.
To deal with the formidable challenges of food and shelter facing the flood victims, the provincial and federal authorities would have to leave behind traditional approaches and devise innovative contingencies plans to reach out to the flood-hit people to protect them against freezing cold. The poor people have very limited time to take stock of imminent shortage of food, water and other means of life.
Haunted by worries about their state of provisionlessness, winter is yet another reminder to the people living in remote districts like Chitral, Kohistan, Dir and other high-altitude regions of Malakand and Hazara that weather vagaries are going to weigh heavily on their life support system in the near future.
The August flooding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has destroyed the traditional means of irrigation and deprived the people of livestock and other means of livelihood, and the situation is likely to worsen in the days and months ahead.
As weather events in all parts of the world have grown in frequency and intensity, Pakistan’s metrological department have issued a new forecast of rains and snow, which means that the winter would bring more worries to the flood victims.
Although the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has hinted at preparing a sound winter contingency plan to cope with the severity of the weather, it seems that the impending situation has not taken in all its seriousness, so far. The PDMA contingency plan envisages to minimize the losses likely to be caused by natural disasters, including extreme low temperature, fog and smog, snowfall, rains, land sliding or flash floods.
According to media reports, PML (N)’s minister for parliamentary affairs Murtaza Javed Abbasi apprised the National Assembly during a recent session about the arrangements being made to organize a donor conference to mitigate miseries of the flood-hit people. According to Mr Abbasi, the conference would focus on the issue of staple food security and availability of resources for recovery of the agriculture sector.
The provincial authorities, especially PDMA, should make all out efforts to ensure its participation in the donor moot scheduled to be held in Islamabad next month.
It is a high time for the government to take stock of looming climate crisis and challenges, and craft a holistic policy to tackle the issue of food security in the snow-bound and flood-hit regions of the country.
All stockholders should also realize the gravity of the situation as we are running short of time and options to help children, women and men living in the regions where the harsh and chilly weather is approaching with a multitude of challenges for the people.
