Daily Times Editorial Aug 5, 2013

Cry havoc once again From north to south, almost the entire country has been inundated by the heavy monsoon rains. The rivers are rising, nullahs (drainage channels) are overflowing, many cities are flooded. Dozens of people have been killed or injured, and the count is mounting. In many areas, including some cities, people have been forced to abandon their homes and seek shelter wherever they can. The ravages of nature, and the monsoon is a regular visitor of such misery on people and places, cannot be prevented. However, preparation for the annual deluge, including ensuring drainage on a national level and in the cities is a responsibility of government. How much of such preparation is in evidence is shown by the countrywide reports of drainage channels blocked by refuse and other impediments, banks unprotected and lacking pre-emptive reinforcement against the force of rushing waters, cities turning rapidly into ‘waterworlds’ and nary a sign of any meaningful and effective relief for the victims. This is not an unfamiliar scenario. It has become a recurring tragedy in recent years. No lessons appear to have been learnt even from the ravages of the floods in two consecutive years, 2010 and 2011, whose affectees are still to be properly and comprehensively rehabilitated to date. To their ranks we must now expect the addition of many more citizens in misery. What, you may ask, have the authorities been doing? At the provincial level first, none of the governments of the worst affected provinces, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan appear to have a clue what to do. Local administrations in the affected areas have struggled to cope, but clearly lack the resources and expertise to deal with an ongoing, and likely to become worse, situation. In Punjab, villages and cities have also ‘drowned’, and the authorities have yet to gear up to match the exigencies of an emerging emergency. At the federal level, yesterday Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took notice of the impending crisis and ordered three federal ministers to tour the affected areas and report. In all this belated flurry, where, one may ask, are the National and Provincial Disaster Management Authorities? Clearly, because of their incompetence, lack of planning or preparation, in the shadow world of ‘disasters’ themselves. Hardly a squeak has been heard out of them, and even fewer steps on the ground are in evidence. What price such white elephants? The traditional recourse to the army to provide the manpower and resources for relief has yet to be mobilized, apart from some small scale deployment in select areas at the request of the local authorities. Since the Meteorological Office is predicting more rains, the crisis is bound to take on the character of a national emergency. Some train traffic has been disrupted in the Jacobabad-Kachhi salient. If the predicted rains arrive, it could cause major disruptions to both rail and road traffic throughout the country. The authorities must wake up and work on the war footing required to meet the challenge. Over the years, there has been much talk of a national drainage programme. The efficacy of whatever has been done in this regard is now on display (and repeated nauseatingly every year). The Indus Basin at the heart of the country’s geography boasts some of the biggest rivers and most extensive canal network in the world. The natural slope of the land from north to south offers immense possibilities of mitigating, if not eliminating, the yearly damage from the monsoons and overflowing water sources. In the cities, the time-honoured recourse to pumping water out from low lying urban areas is now beset with the constraint imposed by the energy crisis. This is a good example of how a crisis in one field can impact on, and add to, crises in other areas. Governments at the Centre and in the provinces, with help from the military, have to gear up quickly to provide relief and succour to the present and potential victims of this annual affliction. But beyond that, the national and urban drainage issues have to be taken up seriously to improve the infrastructure, mitigate the sufferings to the extent possible, and ensure the victims do not once again disappear through the cracks in the edifice of our wholly inadequate disaster management.