KARACHI: President Asif Ali Zardari has nominated 15 senior officers
of the provincial government on Monday to monitor the situation in the
most affected districts in Sindh.
The President gave these directions during a briefing Monday on flood situation in Sindh at Bilawal House Karachi.
President
Zardari directed that highest priority be given to saving human lives
in the flood affected areas by ensuring that food and safe drinking
water is continually supplied without interruption to the victims till
they have been rehabilitated.
No excuse will be tolerated for
any slackness in prompt supply of food and water to the victims and the
administration will be held responsible, he said
Briefing the
media spokesperson to President, Farhatullah Babar said that the
President also directed that senior government officials should be
nominated in each affected district to supervise and coordinate
distribution of relief and rehabilitation aid received from the
government, international agencies and local and foreign NGOs and
philanthropists.
The President said that these officers will be
personally responsible to ensure smooth operation of rescue, relief and
rehabilitation work in the respective districts assigned to them.
A
Special Control Room was also set up in the Bilawal House Monday to
what the President said monitor the monitors’ of relief activities, he
said.
The Special Control Room is directly connected to all the
DCOs and the President will be able to hold video conferences with
provincial government officials and DCO and monitor the progress at any
time. "I will be monitoring the monitors", the President remarked.
Meanwhile,
Farhatullah Babar said that the President had given directions for
setting up the special control room in Bilawal House during his visit
to United Kingdom and the facility had already been put in place.
He said the President planned to stay in Karachi for some days to monitor the flood relief measures.
Stressing
the need for saving lives by ensuring food and water availability, the
President said that if needed, helicopters and boats may be leased from
other countries for this purpose.
The President said that the
next priority should be given to draining out the stagnant rain water
by pumping or gravity flow and by connecting it with the existing
drainage system whichever is feasible.
He called for enhancing
the discharge capacity of existing drains and removing obstructions by
deploying special machinery already available with the different
departments.
The President said that all the stakeholders,
local representatives, political leaders and MNAs and MPAs should also
be involved in this exercise.
Farhatullah Babar said that the
meeting was informed about the extent of huge damages caused by rains
and floods. More than 7.5 million people have been affected in the
calamity while a crop area of over 2 million acres had been damaged,
causing a loss of 215 billion rupees.
About 74 percent of cotton crop and 26 percent of rice crop had been destroyed.
On
the whole, 47 percent of the major crops including cotton, rice and
sugarcane had been destroyed. The damage to these three crops alone was
over Rs 156 billion, he added.
The President also directed that
a permanent solution be found for the drainage of water from Badin
which had been experiencing this problem for quite some time now. He
also stressed the need for drawing up alternate plans for draining
water from the lower areas to prevent stagnation.
The meeting
was informed that a relief package had been prepared by the provincial
government for immediate implementation and urged that 50 percent of
the package cost be borne by the federal government. The President
directed that the relief package plan be also referred to the Federal
government to examine the possibility of federal assistance in its
implementation.
Speaker National Assembly Dr Fehmida Mirza and
Makhdoom Amin Fahim also made presentation on the flood damages in
different parts of the province particularly their respective
constituencies and made proposals for addressing the issues.
The
briefing was attended by Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah,
Speaker National Assemly Dr Fehmida Mirza, Federal Minister Makhdoom
Amin Fahim, Raja Pervez Ashraf MNA , Nazar Mohammad Gondal MNA,
provincial ministers Pir Mazhar, Murad Ali Shah, Agha Siraj Durrani,
Nadir Magsi, Sharjeel Memon, Sassui Palejo, MD Baitul Mall Zamurad Khan
and senior federal and provincial government officers.
On the
occasion, the President talking to Traders and Industrialists, said
that the country has been passing through difficult situation as on the
one side the province Sindh has inundated in flood and on the other
hand the people of Punjab has badly been affected by Dengue virus.
He appealed to Traders and Industrialists to play their role in order to provide relief to flood and dengue affectees. Online
