PESHAWAR, Aug 10: The Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians has urged the federal and provincial governments to provide a rehabilitation package for people affected by floods across the province.

Talking to journalists at the press club here on Thursday, provincial PPP chief Rahimdad Khan said he had witnessed shocking scenes in flood-hit areas of Hazara and Mardan, adding that people were still awaiting relief. Besides scores of lives, he said, the devastating floods had washed away an entire bazaar in Mardan and poor shopkeepers were awaiting quick work for their rehabilitation. He said that doling out some flour bags, blankets and ghee canisters was not the solution to their problems.

He said 50 per cent of the houses in rural areas in Mardan had been destroyed and people were looking towards the government for help. In Charsadda, Mr Khan said, the floods washed away 100 acres every summer, but the provincial government had done nothing to control the land erosion. He said affected villagers, who had also lost their livestock, were at the mercy of the nature which had been unkind to them. He said the daily wage-earners were facing stark prospects as they could not find any work in the flood-hit towns.

He said that the NWFP government should provide interest-free loans to shopkeepers and farmers, whose businesses had been destroyed, adding that the paltry sum of Rs30,000 was insufficient for reconstructing a razed house.