10 August 2010

U.S. Gives Additional $20 Million to Aid Pakistani Flood Victims

U.S. Contributions to Pakistan Flood Relief Now Top $55 Million

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — As the humanitarian catastrophe caused by flooding in Pakistan continues to spread, the Obama administration announced it is contributing an additional $20 million with a special focus on the south of the country as flood waters expand into that region.

To date, the United States has contributed $55 million in humanitarian assistance in response to the crisis, and “our contribution may well grow as we get better insight” into the disaster, said Mark Ward, acting director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Ward said August 10 that as relief workers gradually gain access to more areas inside Pakistan and flooding spreads, the scale of the disaster is growing more apparent.

To speed up the delivery of assistance, the U.S. funds are being channeled through members of the international humanitarian community, including Pakistani nongovernmental organizations, he said.

“What we’re going to be doing with this additional money is, just as the flood is moving south, we are going to move south. We are going to expand those activities with new organizations and existing organizations that we’ve been supporting so that they can move their activities as the flood goes south,” Ward said.

The State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dan Feldman, said U.S. military personnel and equipment are providing additional assistance by using helicopters to rescue people stranded by the floods and to deliver aid.

According to an August 10 State Department fact sheet, the six U.S. Army helicopters have evacuated 2,305 people and delivered 211,000 pounds (95,708 kilos) of relief supplies since they arrived August 5.

The fact sheet said the Obama administration so far has provided a month’s ration of food to about 168,500 people through the World Food Programme (WFP). U.S.-funded food rations are reaching about 20,000 people per day and include 436,000 halal meals, the fact sheet said.

The U.S. has provided 12 prefabricated steel bridges as temporary replacements for those that have washed out, 18 Zodiac rescue boats, six water filtration units that each can produce enough clean water for 10,000 people per day, a 25-kilowatt electric generator, 10 water storage bladders and 30 concrete-cutting saws.

Feldman said 14 million people in Pakistan have already been affected by the floods, and millions may be homeless. There have been reports of food prices quadrupling, hundreds of roads and bridges washed out, as well as the destruction of agricultural crops and the inability to plant for the coming year.

“The immediate repercussions are dramatic, and yet almost more importantly is the fact that this is very much a medium- to longer-term issue with food security, with the economic infrastructure, and with needs that will be ongoing for many months, if not years,” he said.

The additional $20 million “shows the degree of U.S. commitment” to mitigating the humanitarian crisis, he said. “In the face of this disaster, we very much want the Pakistani people to know that the people of the United States are behind them [and] are helping,” Feldman said.

Ward said the immediate concern is to fill the food gap in the country. Despite difficulties in reaching much of the country, that effort appears to be going well.

“WFP estimates … the United States is filling half of the food gap right now,” he said. “We give a lot of credit to WFP for moving … a lot of food, even on the days that we couldn’t get the [helicopters] in the air. They’ve been using four-wheel-drive trucks, and they’ve been using mules,” Ward said.

In remarks to reporters August 9, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said the death toll from the floods, currently estimated at more than 1,400, appears less catastrophic than the country’s 2005 earthquake, which killed 75,000. But he said more people have been affected by the 2010 flooding. The continuing rains are endangering the dam above Sindh, and “the situation will reach an even more catastrophic level” if that dam breaks, he said.

Holbrooke said the flooding is “a major international humanitarian crisis that the world must rally to.” U.S. officials have been contacting other governments to urge them to send more assistance.

Holbrooke and other U.S. officials have also been urging Americans to join the relief effort. By texting “SWAT” to the number 50555, U.S.-based callers can make a $10 contribution that will help the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees provide tents, clothing, food, clean drinking water and medicine to the Pakistani people displaced by the floods.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)