PAKISTAN: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asks the world to step up support for flood victims

Record ID: 560782

  • Title: PAKISTAN: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asks the world to step up support for flood victims
  • Date: 16th August 2010
  • Summary: TWO BOYS WITHOUT SHIRTS
  • Embargoed: 31st August 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Pakistan
  • Country: Pakistan
  • Topics: International Relations,Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA75EHVQU1IUS9PWEN8BT8NDKRW
  • Story Text: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to Pakistan to assess the damage done by the country's worst floods, visited the flood-affected areas in Punjab on Sunday (August 15).
    Ban ki-Moon was aghast at the extent of the devastation caused by the floods that have killed up to 1,600 people, left two million homeless and disrupted lives of a tenth of Pakistan's 170 million people.
    Standing inside a camp set up for victims of the flood, he said the destruction was "beyond imagination" and urged foreign donors to speed up aid to Pakistan
    "I have had the chance to see the tremendous destruction and profound suffering with my own eyes. It is heart-wrenching. The scale and magnitude is difficult to comprehend, beyond imagination. Thousands of villages have been washed away. Roads, bridges, homes, crops wiped off; millions of livelihoods lost. So many millions are in immediate need of help, the world's help," Ban Ki-moon said.
    Six million people still need food, shelter and water and medicine, the United Nations says. Pakistan's government, already facing a Taliban insurgency, now faces the risk of social upheaval and long-term economic pain.
    Ban met both Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been a lightening rod for popular anger after travelling to Europe as the catastrophe unfolded and not cutting short his trip.
    Analysts say a perception that Pakistan was corrupt coupled with Zardari's visit to Europe at the time of the crisis had also done little to encourage foreign donors.
    But Zardari, who accompanied Ban on his visit to the flood hit areas, tried to sound upbeat.
    "When so much is gone, nations get the challenge to rebuild. And we shall rebuild our nation all over again," Zardari told reporters.
    With no respite in sight for rains, the prime minister's office on Sunday warned that a "second and third wave of floods might turn out to be more dangerous". Officials say rains will continue and some reservoirs and dams could burst.
    The meteorological department said heavy rains are expected in Punjab and the northwest and scattered rains in Sindh and Baluchistan over the next two days.
    With an area roughly the size of Italy affected by floods, government and foreign aid has been slow in coming and the United Nations has warned of a second wave of deaths among the sick and hungry if help does not arrive.
    Only a quarter of the $459 million aid needed for initial relief has arrived, according to the United Nations. That contrasts with the United States giving at least $1 billion in military aid last year to its regional ally to battle militants.
    "But I am also here to send a message to the world, these unprecedented floods demand unprecedented assistance. The flood waves must be matched with waves of global support. I want to announce today that I have decided to allocate a further 10 million dollars from the United Nation's central emergency response fund, making a total of 27 million dollars all together," Ban told a newsconference at the Chaklala Airbase before his departure.
    The International Monetary Fund has warned of major economic harm and the Finance Ministry said it would miss this year's 4.5 percent gross domestic product growth target.
    Wheat, cotton and sugar crops have all suffered damage in a country where agriculture is a mainstay of the economy.
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