KARACHI, Aug 3: The Sindh government has ordered reactivation of control rooms and relief centres across the province to ensure preparedness in the face of heavy rains or floods as proper monsoon in this region has started with a delay of about a month, it emerged on Saturday.

“All commissioners, deputy commissioners, relief commissioner and officials of the revenue and relief departments have been asked to remain alert for any emergency as the delayed monsoon may arrive in Sindh and flash floods from the northwest may also hit the province,” said a senior government official while speaking to Dawn.

“For a couple of years now we have been receiving rains quite late, in August, which continue intermittently across the province till late September; so the Met department advisory sees more downpour than the yearly aggregate in Karachi and the rest of Sindh in the days to come,” said the official.

Sindh has experienced floods consecutively since 2010, when the country saw the worst-ever floods in its history that affected almost one-third of its landmass and around 20 million people, more than half of them in Sindh.

A similar situation re-emerged in upper Sindh, particularly Jacobabad, Kashmore and Shikarpur, in 2011 when various districts in the south — including those regarded as its food basket like Tando Allahyar, Tando Mohammad Khan and Mirpurkhas — experienced flooding following torrential rains and because of manmade technical blunders.

Sources in the provincial government said that the authorities concerned never invested adequately in flood-preventive measures, especially strengthening of river embankments and dykes, since the 2011 floods despite the fact that the province faced flood threats in the following two years. They pointed out that river embankments and most dykes were still weak and sensitive, thus vulnerable to the threat.

The health department, which is in the process of being bifurcated as per a recent notification, has established a control room in Hyderabad and is said to have asked its provincial network to stock life-saving drugs and vaccines, including that of snakebite, sensing flood emergency and related requirement.

The provincial authorities, claiming to have limited resources to pile up the stocks in a sufficient quantity and ensure provision of medical facilities in such an emergency, are in contact with the World Health Organisation and other relevant UN agencies, which had played a key role in scaling up relief efforts during the previous floods.

The relief department, in the meantime, is rendering its contribution by arranging tents for the people feared to be affected by a possible emergency and is seeking figures of schools from the education department that could be used as relief camps.

Since non-governmental organisations had also played a remarkable role in relief efforts in the past, the government is taking some major local NGOs in the loop as well.

“We have learnt a lot from our mistakes in the past. Now we are fully conscious and attentive about our responsibilities and effective executions,” said a relief department official.