Pakistan in crisis

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Pakistan in crisis

Mark Colvin reported this story on Friday, December 3, 2010 18:28:00



MARK COLVIN: The devastating floods in Pakistan happened in July but their effects live on. In the height of the Pakistani summer, they displaced 20 million people. Now, four and a half months on, only just over a quarter of those have recovered.

Khurram Masood is Pakistan communications director for Save the Children. I asked him for the facts and figures as Pakistan moves into what, for many, will be a freezing winter.

KHURRAM MASOOD: People are still, there's about 14 million people still in need of humanitarian assistance on a daily basis; some in terms of food supplies, some in terms of medicine, schools have been destroyed and because the land has been damaged, the agricultural land, there's been no crop growing season for this year which traditionally is in the window sort of in the middle of November.

But because some land is so water logged, people's seeds have been destroyed and a lot of the flood affected people are sort of landless tenants and bonded labour-type people, they haven't been able to plan. So we don't see really a food security situation improving at least for another sort of 12 to 18 months.

MARK COLVIN: Did you say 14 million people?

KHURRAM MASOOD: Fourteen million who require assistance sort of on a daily basis. It's not like an urgent situation whereby there's a danger of mass scale epidemic and death and starvation but there is severe malnutrition and people have gone back to their places of origin but are living in tents or in make-shift shelter and the temperatures are dropping quite fast. And the 14 million figure is to do with mainly the food supply and the shelter issue as well.

MARK COLVIN: So for the people in the north of Pakistan where it gets very cold in the winter and you say seven million people without shelter, that's a real crisis waiting to happen.

KHURRAM MASOOD: Well it's already happened I'm afraid. It is a real crisis and unfortunately the people in the north, unfortunately they've just got out of the IDP (internally displaced people) crisis, the conflict in the north between the militants and the Pakistani army.

And last year, I'm not sure whether you know, from about March 2009 there's been conflict going on and people have left the land and they'd just started to go back and resettle and rebuild their lives and unfortunately the floods came upon them so they've had to go through it twice over, you know, in just as many years.

MARK COLVIN: What kind of aid is being given to those people?

KHURRAM MASOOD: Food aid is being given to those people and medical facilities are being provided but, you know, an organisation like Save the Children are working but again, as I said, the scale is enormous, the terrain is difficult and we are providing like one or two or three interventions where possible. What the change is now is that where initially in the emergency was mobile health teams that were going from sort of village to village.

Now what we're trying to do is because people have moved back predominantly to where they came from, we're sort of setting up static facilities and the governments are responsible and health clinics, upgrading them.

And in terms of food, instead of just distributing food, which we continue to do, now it's more a question of livelihood support and Cash For Food programs whereby the community, we're working with the community, providing materials for them to rehabilitate either the roads or the houses or community infrastructure like colleges and schools and clinics and that sort of thing.

And incidentally in the southern Pakistan there's still water, three or four districts. It's had a lot.

MARK COLVIN: But just staying on the north for a moment, how are those people going to stay warm and dry when you've got freezing rain or even snow?

KHURRAM MASOOD: Well it hasn't rained. It's been quite dry. But the temperatures do go minus zero.

MARK COLVIN: But it's only December now.

KHURRAM MASOOD: Yes it's only December. The rain normally is expected sort of in the winter, there's a winter two week sort of wet spell at the end of the January, the beginning of February. And what can I say? The people are just making do the best they can. They're resilient people.

What's happening now, because it's dry there's a lot of dust in the air and Pakistan normally has like there are 85,000 deaths from pneumonia for under five children every year and we're noticing a sparked increase in the complaints of, you know, acute respiratory tract infections so that's a real danger. If it rains, that situation improves.

MARK COLVIN: But that's almost incomprehensible for us in Australia to think of 85,000 children a year dying under those circumstances and that's just in normal times. How big is it going to be this year?

KHURRAM MASOOD: Well the worry is that it's going to be much more. Now hopefully what we're seeing is that because there's more organisations working on the ground with vulnerable communities that the ill will get spotted and we can treat more and help more people. So you know maybe a silver lining that we can get, we can reach more.

MARK COLVIN: And in the south you said that the floods haven't receded in some places so when will they?

KHURRAM MASOOD: Well we don't really expect it for at least until the springtime because it's cold and there's nowhere for the water to evaporate and because it's on the coast, because it's not warm anymore, it's still a bit chilly. So…

MARK COLVIN: So those people have got the problem of wet ground and nowhere to light a fire?

KHURRAM MASOOD: That's right and nowhere to put up a tent and nowhere to lay their beds and nowhere to work, nowhere to plant their lands, plant their fields.

MARK COLVIN: Khurram Masood, Pakistan communications director for Save the Children.


PM - Pakistan in crisis 03/12/2010