FLOODING IN PAKISTAN’S PUNJAB PROVINCE FORCED 100,000 PEOPLE TO EVACUATE

Wed 23 August 2023:

Around 100,000 people have been evacuated from flooded areas in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The Sutlej river breached its banks on Sunday, inundating several hundred towns and thousands of acres of cropland in the central region. Residents and livestock have been evacuated to higher ground by emergency services.

“We have rescued 100,000 people and transferred them to safer places,” Farooq Ahmad, spokesman for the Punjab emergency services, told AFP.

Small-scale evacuations began in July after neighboring India diverted water from dams into the Ravi River, which flows from India into Pakistan.

Later rains also flooded the Sutlej River, prompting authorities to evacuate people living nearby.

The national disaster management agency said water levels in the Ravi River are currently normal but will rise further in the Sutlej River this week.

More than 175 people have died in Pakistan in rain-related incidents since the monsoon season began in late June, mainly due to electrocution and buildings collapsing, emergency services have reported.

“There is five or six feet (1.5-1.8 metres) of water accumulated over the roads. The only route that could have been used to come and go is now under water. This 15- or 16-kilometre route is now being covered by boat so that we can rescue people,” Muhammad Amin, a local doctor volunteering at a relief camp, told AFP on Tuesday.

The Punjab disaster management agency warned that forecasted monsoon rains could exacerbate the flooding in the coming days.

Pakistani authorities are still struggling to overcome the damage caused by massive floods last summer that affected 33 million people and killed 1,739. They caused $30 billion in damage to the country’s economy.

The monsoon season began in July and will continue until September.

According to officials, Pakistan, which has the world’s fifth-largest population, is responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is extremely vulnerable to extreme weather worsened by global warming.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

______________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent