KARACHI, Sept 28: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah on Friday presided over a meeting at the Chief Minister’s House regarding relief and disaster management activities for rain-hit people in the province.

Sindh chief secretary Raja Mohammed Abbas, Sindh senior member of the board of revenue/relief commissioner Shahzore Shamoon, finance secretary Mohammed Arif Khan, Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) director general Hashim Raza Zaidi, and other PDMA and irrigation department officials attended the meeting.

The chief minister said that due to heavy rains most of the areas of six districts in upper Sindh had vastly been affected and the people had suffered a great deal.

He said that many people had died and cattle perished and valuable crops had been damaged in the rains and floods.

The chief minister directed officers of the relief, health and livestock departments to provide necessary relief goods to the badly affected people while the health and the livestock departments were asked to properly manage and establish more medical and veterinary camps so that there was no outbreak of diseases.

He directed the finance department to release funds to the rehabilitation/relief department and the PDMA so that there was no lapse in relief and disaster management work. Earlier, the PDMA director general in a briefing to the participants in the meeting said that the province received scattered rains, thunder showers and heavy rains between Sept 2 and Sept 11.

He said that all deputy commissioners had been instructed for round-the-clock activation of the district emergency operation centres and all essential resources, such as pumps to drain out rainwater, were deployed at low-lying areas.

He said that due to the heavy rains, 3,166,023 people and 13,221 villages were affected and 359,131 houses were badly damaged while 239 people had died and 2,449 people were injured.

He said that 7,952,684 head of cattle were affected and major standing crops damaged, including 141,097 hectares of cotton, 118,862 hectares of rice and 5,942 hectares of sugar cane crops. He said 15 pumps were in use by the irrigation department, five pumps in Jacobabad airbase, four in Shikarpur and 13 in Sukkur districts to remove standing rainwater from the affected areas.

Besides, 30 medical camps and 61 fixed camps had been arranged in six affected districts of Ghotki, Sukkur, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Kashmore and Qambar, while 50 veterinary camps were established for livestock with 185 staff members, he added.

He further informed the participants in the meeting that 58,352 patients were treated at the medical camps.

It was stated that the Sindh government provided 67,252 tents, 117,288 ration bags, 139 water pumps and Rs344 million cash to rain-hit people.

It was also stated that the armed forces personnel also took part in relief operations in close coordination with the PDMA.—APP