ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has failed to invest in prevention measures
since last year's floods that killed 1,750 people and is vulnerable to
another disaster this monsoon season, Oxfam said Tuesday.
The
relief agency marked one year since the beginning of the 2010 disaster,
when flooding inundated a third of Pakistan, by calling for more money
to be spent on reconstruction, suitable housing and early-warning
systems.
About 21 million people were affected by the worst
floods in Pakistan since the country was founded in 1947, and tens of
thousands of people are still living in emergency camps.
"Pakistan
needs to act now. Investing in measures today that reduce the impact of
disasters is essential to save lives and safeguard development gains in
the future," said Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan.
"It will
ensure schools built with aid funds are not washed away and that
farmers can keep the crops they have toiled over. A year after
Pakistan's mega floods it's time we learnt this lesson."
Releasing
a new report entitled "Ready or Not", Oxfam said that 37,000 people
were still in camps in Sindh, the worst-hit province, and 800,000
families nationwide were without proper homes one year on.
It
warned that river embankments had not been rebuilt, leaving villages
more open to flooding, and that two to five million people were likely
to be affected by this year's monsoon floods.
"Villagers in areas
that we work fear new flooding. Many are planting fewer crops than
usual as they are worried that their harvests will be destroyed in
fresh floods," Khan said.
"In some areas, where fresh flooding
has already begun, families have started to dismantle their houses and
move to higher ground as they are scared of losing everything again."
The
Pakistan government's response to the 2010 floods, which began in the
last week of July, was widely criticised, with much of the emergency
relief aid coming from foreign donor nations.
Crops, roads,
schools, electricity lines and bridges were all washed away in a
country already suffering from Islamic militant attacks and political
instability.
Pakistan's chronic corruption has also made donors
wary of giving more money, and the Oxfam report said a UN appeal had a
shortfall of $600 million to support "early recovery activities".
The
meteorological department in Islamabad has predicted the 2011 monsoon
will be below average overall, and the government has not reported any
significant flooding yet this year.
"So far there has been no
unusual impact on river flows, which remain normal," chief
meteorologist Arif Mehmood told AFP. "Our forecast also suggests there
will be no flooding in the next 15 days."
The strength of the
annual downpour between July to September is vital to hundreds of
millions of farmers across South Asia who rely on the rains to irrigate
their crops for much of the rest of the year. AFP
