ISLAMABAD: The administration of Sindh’s Jacobabad district has written to the irrigation department to initiate a storm water drainage scheme under the climate change mitigation and adaptation plan.

Months after the floods, the district is still facing permanent water logging, which is damaging cultivable lands.

The district administration has said a further delay on part of the irrigation department may lead to food insecurity and poverty in Jacobabad.

The district was one of the worst-hit areas during the last year’s floods. According to the post-flood damage assessment, as many as 115,000 houses, 200,000 agriculture acres, 83,000 livestock, 162 major and minor farms to market roads, 37 health facilities and 392 schools have been washed away.

This destruction would have been seventy per cent less had there been an integrated storm water drainage system in the Jacobabad district, the official communication noted.

Administration writes to irrigation dept as water logging affects cultivable land; UN report says 1.8m people still living near stagnant ponds

The letter, a copy of which is available with Dawn, emphasised that the central challenge for Jacobabad was the unavailability of a storm water drainage system.

The district administration, in the letter, claimed that permanent water logging has directly damaged around 70,000 acres of cultivable land and could affect over 100,000 acres of fertile land.

The irrigation department was informed that last year’s floods damaged settlements and infrastructures on natural water. This will be repeated in coming seasons as frequent and intense downpour, triggered by climate change, could permanently destroy the oldest settlements in the district if no flood water drainage system is laid.

The displaced population couldn’t be rehabilitated and agriculture couldn’t be revived as some pockets are still inundated even seven months after the floods, the letter stated.

Many districts in Sindh are facing water logging months after the floods. PDMA Sindh has declared an urgent need for dewatering activities in the districts of Nausharo Feroze, Khairpur, Sukkur, Jhatta, and Ghotki. To achieve this, five excavators, dewatering pumps, and fuel are required to complete the dewatering process and provide people with appropriate livelihood standards.

Deplorable situation

According to the latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) that was released on Friday, approximately 1.8m people are still living near contaminated and stagnant flood water pools six months after the government declared a national emergency.

The UNOCHA report further stated that flooding in Balochistan continued to affect vulnerable populations, with stagnant water remaining visible in some UCs of Nasirabad division. Malaria and other waterborne diseases are becoming an increasingly concerning issue, with Vector Borne Disease positivity rates at 74pc in Sohbatpur, 62pc in Jhal Magsi, 52pc in Nasirabad, 52pc in Jaffarabad and 41pc in Kacchi district.

Nutrition, food security and public health are major concerns as many of these people in temporary shelters lack basic food items (at risk of sliding into an emergency level of hunger) and increased cases of malnutrition.

Pakistan has the twenty-fifth highest infant mortality rate globally, with almost half of all deaths in children under 5 being caused by undernutrition. More than 1.5 million children were lacking severe acute malnutrition (SAM) services, with 170,000 of them suffering from SAM with complications and lack of stabilisation treatment.

According to the International Labour Organization, the floods in Pakistan have had a devastating effect on the workforce, with 4.3 million workers in affected districts experiencing job losses and disruptions.

This amounts to 20pc of the pre-flood workforce. The agriculture sector was the most significantly impacted, with 43pc (1.9m people) affected, followed by the services industry 36pc (1.5m people), and industry 21pc (0.9m people).

In rural areas, the report says, food inflation has skyrocketed to 45pc, leaving countless people unable to purchase enough food to sustain themselves and their families. This alarming statistic has caused more than one million people to become dependent on humanitarian aid for sustenance.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023