3.2m hectares of crops destroyed in floods

SUKKUR: Over 1,600 people have died while 15.4 million have been affected by the floods in Pakistan, said chief of United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Daniele Donati on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference along with the country representative FAO Luigi Damiani and Dr Faizul Bari, the project director of Food Facility Pakistan, Donati said millions of livestock have been affected by the floods. Hundreds of thousands of them need emergency assistance, and if immediate action is not taken then tens of thousands of them will die.

According to Donati, over 200,000 cattle have been killed in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa alone. Approximately 80 per cent of the population in the affected areas depends on agriculture and 3.2 million hectares of standing crops have been destroyed.

Rice, maize, cotton, sugar, tobacco and vegetables have also been damaged. Seeds saved by households for the coming seasons have been ruined or lost, he said, adding that livestock is “the poor people’s mobile ATM”.

“Every animal we save is a productive asset that poor families can use to rebuild their lives after the floods,” said Donati.

Sindh and Punjab provinces are part of the country’s breadbasket and if the fields are still flooded in the next few months, there is a serious risk that the wheat-planting season in October will be affected.

Out of sight, but still in their minds

KARACHI: As the second wave of floods threaten Sindh, some solace can be drawn from the fact that relief efforts are being made across borders and oceans.

The Muslim Students Association at Columbia University, New York is part of this struggle to help those affected thousands of miles away. Even though school is closed, students rallied to raise $15,000 (nearly Rs1.2 million) from different fund-raising activities, including going door-to-door, in Muslim communities, mosques and churches in New York city.

“This money will be donated to the great work being done by the Rural Support Programme and the Armed Forces of Pakistan, while the goods we have received will be air shipped,” Taimur T Malik, president of the Columbia Muslim Students Association told The Express Tribune via email.

Across the ocean, in London, four people, Adil, Fatima, Naz and Hammad, decided that they would hit 10 tube stations for donations and collections on Aug 19 at 8:00 am and Aug 20 the same time. The effort, aptly named ‘Tube Collections for the Pakistan floods’, will ultimately benefit the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) Relief Fund. They can be contacted on facebook or at allforpakistan@gmail.com. Meanwhile on the home front, Iqra University (IU) is also stepping up its game. University management held a meeting with students to discuss relief efforts for people across the province. “We need to play our part as students,” said IU Registrar Akif Hasan. “We have a platform from where we can gather and make efforts to help those in distress.”

Four Sindh-based students back home from Kyrgyzstan

KARACHI/HYDERABAD/SUKKUR: Four students in Sindh have reached home safely after witnessing the violence in Kyrgyzstan.

Two sisters, Amna and Lubna, arrived in their hometown in Padidan, District Naushero Feroz, on Wednesday. They were greeted by family, friends and neighbours at the railway station and a string of visitors kept coming throughout the day.

“The situation in Osh was really bad,” Lubna told The Express Tribune, as she expressed her gratitude to the government for rescuing them. “We would like to request the government to save our future and allow us to complete our final year of medicine from a university in Pakistan,” she appealed.

Two killed as Kyrgyz clashes trap Pakistanis

SUKKUR / TOBA TEK SINGH: Two Pakistani students have been killed and at least ten others taken hostage during ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan.

Ubaidullah Ansari, a student of medical science at the Osh State University, who has returned to Jacobabad, told Dawn on Sunday that more than 500 Pakistanis were stranded in the Central Asian state.

He said a female student of final year at a medical university and Ali Raza, a fourth-year student of engineering, were killed and more than a dozen others taken hostage in the south of Kyrgyzstan.