EU pledges extra €30m for Pakistan

THE European Union says it will spend an extra €30m to fund emergency aid for victims of devastating floods in Pakistan.

The announcement brings the total promised by the EU to €70m, and does not include money donated by individual EU member states.

Only a small minority of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received help after floods that have killed up to 1,600 people and left two million homeless.

“There has been an improvement in funding. Donors are realising the scale of the disaster,” UN spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said, “but the challenges are absolutely massive and the floods are not over.”

“The size of [the area affected by] this disaster is equivalent to Austria, Switzerland and Belgium combined. That’s pretty scary.”

A few days ago only a quarter of aid pledged had been received, prompting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to urge donors to speed up funding. So far food rations and access to clean water have only been provided to around 700,000 flood survivors, the UN said.

The International Organisation for Migration said there were still about 700,000 households without shelter.

Hundreds of villages are isolated, highways and bridges have been cut in half by floods and hundreds of thousands of cattle — the livelihoods of many villagers — have drowned.

In a possible sign of respite for aid agencies, authorities said there were signs monsoon rains could ease.

“We cannot see any new [weather] system developing that could produce heavy rains,” said Pakistan’s Meteorological Department head, Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry.

“Now rivers on the upstream are returning to normal, but in Sindh it will take another 10 days.”

Many hospitals, however, were overwhelmed and fears rose for possible epidemics of diseases and viruses such as malaria.

“Up to now the situation is under control but it is difficult to maintain because of the hygiene conditions,” said Dr Zulfiqar Ahmed Shaikh, medical superintendent at a state hospital in Sukkur, a main city in the southern province of Sindh.

The United Nations has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects in a crisis that has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of Pakistan’s 170 million people.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says Pakistan could face food shortages if its farmers miss the sowing season, which is due to start next month.