Sumaira Gul
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: The historic monsoon rains killed above 1,000 people and badly affected nearly 33 million others in different parts of Pakistan.
However, the authorities blamed climate change for the deadliest floods played havoc damaging houses, roads and bridges in last few days.
Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman described the seasonal rainfall as a monsoon monster and blamed climate change for the deadliest flooding in the South Asian nation of about 220 million people in more than a decade.
She declared that Pakistan was living through one of the most serious climate catastrophes in the world, and that it was wreaking nonstop havoc throughout the country.
She said that Pakistan is at this point ground zero, the front line, with extreme weather events, which we have seen from early this year in an unrelenting cascade of heat wave, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake-outburst-flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade.
She added that the amount of water on the ground has inundated huge swaths of Pakistan, with 33 million people affected, many stranded.
“Thousands are without shelter; many are without food. And people are stranded,” Sherry Rehman
Rehman said an assessment of needs was being prepared but that Pakistan would require all the international help it could get because dealing with the disaster was beyond the capacity of federal or provincial governments.
Sindh received 784% more rainfall this month than the August average, while Baluchistan had received almost 500% more, according to official data.
Since mid-June, when the monsoon seasons began in Pakistan, more than 3,000 kilometers of roads, 130 bridges and tens of thousands of homes have been damaged across the country, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Parts of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and central Punjab provinces might face “very high to an exceptionally high level of flooding” in the next few days, according to the NDMA forecast.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ Pakistan is awash in suffering. The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding. This climate catastrophe has killed more than 1,000 people, with many more injured.
Millions are homeless, schools and health facilities have been destroyed, livelihoods are shattered, critical infrastructure wiped out, and people’s hopes and dreams have washed away. Every province of the country has been affected.
Let’s stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change. Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country, UN Secretary-General António Guterres
The Government of Pakistan has asked for the international community’s help. Let us work together to respond quickly and collaboratively to this colossal crisis. Let us all step up in solidarity and support the people of Pakistan in their hour of need.
