GENEVA, Oct 27: Key emergency aid operations for Pakistani earthquake survivors are still vastly underfunded a day after donor nations promised about half a billion dollars more in overall assistance, UN data indicated on Thursday.
A UN-coordinated appeal has received just two per cent (1.5 million dollars) of the 95 million dollars needed for shelter and non-food supplies, the latest financial tracking information from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showed.
Just four per cent (2.5 million dollars) of the 58 million dollars needed for food aid has been paid over, while donors have delivered 17 per cent of the 62 million dollar health budget.
Aid agencies have warned that those three sectors are crucial to the fate of an estimated two million people, including the homeless and injured, in mountainous Azad Kashmir, with winter due to set in within weeks.
About 1.6 million people are in need of assistance with food, and up to 1.6 million face winter without shelter of any kind, according to UN documents given to some 60 donor nations at a meeting in Geneva on Wednesday.
While 316,000 tents have been provided or are on their way to the devastated region, the UN estimates that another 210,000 need to be sent swiftly to the region before bad weather closes in.
The overall United Nations appeal has garnered 69 million dollars, or 13 per cent of the 550 million dollar total.
That is equivalent to about one fifth of what was needed before the appeal was increased on Wednesday.
Excluding promised aid, the top contributors so far are the United States (10.8 million dollars), unnamed private donors (8.2 million dollars), Japan (eight million dollars), Scandinavian countries and Canada.
The total contributions do not include another 43.8 million dollars in uncommitted pledges towards the appeal, according to the UN data.
Although the aid is meant to run over six months, a World Food Programme official estimated that about 60 per cent of funding was necessary to be able to pre-position enough food stocks in the region to cope with winter.
International donors promised an additional 580 million dollars for Pakistan at the meeting in Geneva, though not necessarily for the urgent operations in the appeal, according to a tally by UN officials.
The pledges were inadequate and may not save a single one of the survivors facing a cold and hungry winter, British charity Oxfam said on Thursday.
The appeal for funding, first launched on October 11, covers operations by UN agencies, as well as some other independent charities such as Save the Children, the International Rescue Corps (IRC) and World Vision, over six months.
However, several dozen other agencies, including the Red Cross and Red Crescent are active in the area struck by the earthquake and have separate appeals or funding sources.
The UN tally does not account for some aid in kind such as the NATO airlift flying essential supplies to Pakistan.
Pakistan is also receiving direct bilateral offers form other governments.
An estimated 1.3 million dollars has been promised or donated for Pakistan through various channels, either for short-term relief or long-term reconstruction.
HELICOPTERS: Helicopters ferrying food and supplies to Pakistan’s quake victims stranded in the Himalayas may have to be grounded in just days if donors fail to increase emergency relief aid, a UN official said in Geneva on Thursday.
“When the money runs out, the choppers stay on the ground and that’s what’s going to start happening in the next couple of days,” said Robert Smith, financial expert at the United Nations’ leading disaster-relief body, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
Relief workers and earthquake survivors were disappointed by a meagre $16 million raised at a donor conference in Geneva on Wednesday that had been designed to raise $550 million.
Hopes faded for a second-day surge in donations as UN staff recorded only $2 million in net new contributions on Thursday, bringing the total to $113 million — far short of the $550 million the UN says it needs to avert a catastrophe.
The UN’s World Food Programme, charged with the logistics for the entire UN relief effort, said it was alarmed that so little money had been committed.
“Without new donations, we can’t procure food or fly the helicopters,” WFP said in a statement. “With hundreds of thousands of people still cut off by landslides and winter setting in, there are fears that desperately needed aid could come too late.”
Mr Smith said helicopters were virtually the only way to supply those stranded as the quake, snows and landslides triggered by some 900 recorded aftershocks had made most roads impassable.—AFP/Reuters
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