ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: As many as 55,000 people on an average are killed and 7.2 million affected per annum by disasters and conflicts in South Asia.

This situation needs joint efforts of governments, civil society organizations, NGOs and individuals to prevent the region from these disasters.

These were the views of the participants at the opening session of a four-day regional media and policy workshop on “Fencing floods in South Asia — Disaster Preparedness Through Risk Communication”. The workshop has been organized by the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) South Asia, Journalist Resource Centre (JRC), Rural Development Policy Institute and Duryung Nivaran, South Asia at a local hotel on Sunday.

The participants were of the view that in the last 25 years, on an average year, the equivalent to two-thirds of the population of Bangladesh was affected by disasters in South Asia.

Well-known natural disasters include the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, 1992 flood in Pakistan, 1993 earthquake in India and 1993 flood in Nepal which caused enormous damage. They said the estimated reconstruction cost ran into billions of dollars.

Head of the Hydrology Division, Government of Pakistan, Dr S.M. Saeed Shah, and assistant professor in University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Engr H.F. Gabriel, in their joint paper, stated that Pakistan had been recognized as a major natural calamity area. They said the country had a long history of flooding from Indus River and its tributaries.

They said in 1988 and 1992 devastating floods swept across the country and resulted in loss of life and widespread damage to private and public sector infrastructure.

The catastrophe of 1992 surpassed all previous records with damages estimated at Rs50 billion in addition to loss of human lives. Nearly one million houses were also destroyed in the disaster and over two million hectres of agriculture land was inundated, destroying cotton, rice and sugarcane crops.

The chairman of National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), Danyal Aziz, in his speech, said calamities and disasters were joint problems of South Asian countries and there was a need to take joint measures to prevent such situations.

Pakistan, he said, was most affected by these disasters. However, the introduction of the local government system has proved helpful in meeting these challenges, he added.

Chief Engineer, Flood Management Central Water Commission India, S.B. Srivastav and Engr M. Gopalakrishnan, in their paper entitled “The Flood Problem and Flood Forecasting and Warning Network in India”, said floods were a recurrent phenomenon in India.

Almost every year some parts of the country are affected by floods of varying magnitude. They said different regions of the country had different climates and rainfall patterns.