With a massive cloudburst predicted to be just around the corner, the provincial government has ordered relevant officials to reactivate flood relief control rooms and relief centres across Sindh as a precautionary measure to face the potential threat of flooding in Sindh’s urban and rural districts, it emerged earlier yesterday.
“All the commissioners, deputy commissioners, relief commissioner and officials of the revenue and relief departments have been asked to stay alert for any emergent situation as monsoon in Sindh is arriving in addition to widespread rains being reported from the country’s north,” said a senior official in the provincial government while speaking to the media.
Health minister Jam Mehtab Dahar, in the meantime, declared a high alert in government hospitals on account of expected heavy monsoon rain.
A government spokesman said the minister had directed all medical superintendents of public sector hospitals to cancel the leaves of doctors and paramedics and ensure their presence round the clock. They have also been asked to stock a good number of medicines in their health facilities.
He feared the potential outbreak of malaria and diarrhoea etc, warranting preparedness to face untoward situations.
“There is no dearth of funds in the health department. We should maintain transparency in purchasing and stocking of medicines. The met department has predicted heavy rainfall this year so we have to be very vigilant because it involves human lives,” Mr Dahar said, adding that action was being taken against absent employees of the health department.
Although the province has already received sporadic rain so far which traditionally starts in mid- June, officials however, said with the drifting of the weather trend every year, they had a forecast from the meteorological department warning of forthcoming widespread rains.
“For a couple of years we are receiving rainfall quite late in August, which continues intermittently across the province till late September. But the met department has warned of early downpours this year more than the yearly aggregate in Karachi and the rest of Sindh,” said the official.
Sindh has seen floods consecutively every year since 2010 when the country witness floods which affected almost one-third of its landmass and impacted around 20 million people, more than half of them belonging to Sindh.
Sindh’s various districts in its south, including those regarded as its food basket like Tando Allahyar, Tando Mohammad Khan and Mirpurkhas, had been flooded because of widespread rains and manmade technical blunders in 2011, while a situation similar to 2010 was reported in its upper districts, particularly Jacobabad, Kashmore and Shikarpur.
Sources in the provincial government said that despite the continued danger of floods every monsoon, authorities failed to invest adequately in the improvement of water management system especially river embankments and dykes, most of which are still regarded as sensitive and vulnerable.
The provincial health department has however, established a control room in Hyderabad and is said to have asked its provincial network to stock life-saving medicines and vaccines, including that of snakebites, to be used during emergencies.
As the provincial authorities claimed of having limited resources to pile up sufficient quantity of medicines and provide medical facilities in case of flooding, it is however, in contact with the World Health Organization and other UN-linked relief organisations, which had played a key role in scaling-up relief efforts during previous floods, to remain in the loop.
The relief department, in the meantime, is contributing by arranging tents for future flood-affected people and has demanded the figures of schools from the education department that could again be declared as relief camps as had been in the past.
Since non-governmental organisations had played a considerable role during previous flood efforts, the government is taking some major local NGOs in the loop as well.
“We have learnt a lot from our mistakes in the past. Now we are fully conscious and attentive about our functions and effective executions,” claimed a relief department official.
