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Pakistani premier promises compensation for flood victims

Published:Wednesday | September 14, 2022 | 10:11 AM
Victims of heavy flooding from monsoon rains crowd carry relief aid through flood water in the Qambar Shahdadkot district of Sindh Province, Pakistan, September 9, 2022. The United Nations says weather disasters costing $200 million a day and irreversible climate catastrophe looming show the world is “heading in the wrong direction.” (AP Photo/Fareed Khan, File)

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's prime minister on Wednesday promised the country's homeless people that the government will ensure they are paid to rebuild and return to their lives after the country's worst-ever floods.

With winter just weeks away, half a million people are living in camps after being displaced by the flood, which destroyed 1.7 million homes.

So far, the government's priority has been to deliver food, tents and cash to the victims.

The floods have killed 1,481 people since mid-June and affected 33 million.

“We will do our best to financially help you so that you can rebuild homes” and return to a normal life, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif told several families living in tents and makeshift homes in the town of Suhbatpur in Baluchistan.

“Those who lost homes and crops will get compensation from the government,” he said in his televised comments.

Sharif also told dozens of school children, who were studying in a tent with help from the United Nations children's agency UNICEF in the town of Suhbatpur, that they will get a new school in the next two months.

“Pakistan never witnessed such huge climate-induced devastation,” Sharif told a gathering of lawyers in Islamabad on Wednesday. “It was painful to see inundated villages, towns and cities.”

Sharif said the winter season will start in Pakistan after 15 days, and “then another challenge for the flood victims will be how to survive in the harsh cold as currently they were living in tents in summer.

Even providing clean drinking water to flood-affected people has become a challenge, he said.

The floods have destroyed 70% of wheat, cotton and other crops in Pakistan.

Initially, Pakistan estimated that the floods caused $10 billion in damages, but now the government says the economic toll is far greater. The United Nations has urged the international community, especially those responsible for climate change, to send more help to Pakistan.

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