Even before people living in the catchment area could recover from the human and material cost of last year’s floods, as fate would have it, they are now facing another disaster caused by heavy rains, glacial melt and abnormal weather patterns.
And, the forecast for more torrential rains in the coming days may only worsen their situation.
As per the figures released by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), flooding has so far killed about 86 people in the country over the past two weeks and has affected almost 300,000 people.
Though these figures are no match to those recorded during the 2010 floods that affected 20.25 million people, caused 1,985 deaths, damaged 1.89 million houses and inundated area measuring 132,000 sq km, they hint at the fact that floods have become a regular phenomenon in Pakistan.
Nobody can fight the forces of nature, yet, many believe, the failure of the state to manage floodwaters has turned this calamity into a disaster.
More than normal rainfall in the current monsoon season has triggered flash floods mostly in the northern parts of the country that form the catchment area of River Indus. There is high flood warning in this river and the areas falling in and around its path are at a major risk of inundation.
Chitral in KPK and Gilgit Baltistan have faced large-scale destruction. So has southern Punjab, where 375 villages have been inundated, standing crop destroyed and thousands of people evacuated from their homes. Sindh is bracing to receive heavy flows of floodwaters.
Multiple entities are out there to shift affected people to safer places, provide them medicines and food and ultimately rehabilitate them.
One wonders, for how long will these exercises be repeated? Will there be more focus on prevention and less on cure? Will floodwaters be ever stored and pass through waterways without causing damage?
Meteorologist Dr Qamar uz Zaman Chaudhry, who is one of the authors of the national climate change policy, tells TNS that this year the excessive river flows have affected the settlements in riverine areas and have not harmed people living at safe distances -- "Some people have set up concrete structures in these riverine areas where only agriculture is allowed. They have not learned from previous disasters."
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Rain patterns, adds Chaudhry, have drastically changed, and "now an area may receive rainfall 10 times or more of its average over a small period of time. The centre of monsoon concentration can also shift, as happened a couple of years ago when Pakistan’s eastern rivers that flow in Punjab received rainwater in abundance and overflowed".
On the flood situation in Punjab, spokesperson of the provincial irrigation department, Najam Abbas, tells TNS that though waters have been released in Pakistan’s eastern rivers by India, they are flowing normally. "Currently, there is no threat of flooding in them."
Southern Punjab, he says, is affected due to high floods in River Indus and the flash floods caused by torrential rains in the hilly areas (Suleman Range) along Dera Ghazi Khan and its neighbouring areas.
According to him, the river erosion in Layyah has done a lot of damage and the engineers of the Punjab Irrigation Department are struggling hard to stop further destruction. "The erosion by rivers is a natural phenomenon which results in intrusion into lands along its path."
The fact that central and northern Punjab are safe from floods at the moment does not mean that they are risk-free. According to an NDMA study, the province is prone to three types of flood risks: riverine floods, flash floods, and urban floods caused by incessant rains occurring intermittently in the major cities. "Riverine floods pose flood risk to all districts of Punjab lying on the banks of the rivers. Flash floods pose risk to D.G. Khan and Rajanpur districts and urban flood is a risk for the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Sialkot."
A huge challenge that the provincial machinery faces is the removal of encroachments from waterways, nullahs etc. that aggravated the situation in the recent past when excess water played havoc with the Basmati rice growing belt in Punjab.
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Engineer Muhammad Suleman Khan, chairperson, Sindh Tas Water Council Pakistan, strongly advocates construction of small and big reservoirs to save floodwaters and to control their flow. While talking to TNS, he says, the Indus River System Authority chairperson, who hails from KPK, has requested the government to freeze all development plans for five years and, instead, construct reservoirs with cumulative storage capacity of 22 MAF.
For him, this matter cannot be further delayed for political reasons as, "the country is paying a heavy price for this bickering".
He adds, "there is no way to manage waters of the mighty Indus other than through construction of Kalabagh Dam. River Jhelum is safe to a great extent due to the raising of the Mangla Dam’s level. Then why not Indus? If this dam had been there, the water of Indus could have been held back and the hill torrents of Koh-e-Suleman allowed to flow downstream first."
Salman Abid, a local government expert, terms the absence of local governments and the resource crunch faced by the District Disaster Management Authorities (DDMAs) the main reasons behind mismanagement during floods. Talking to TNS, he says, disaster preparedness is a purely local thing, "but this is not the case in our country". He shares that he visited the offices of DDMAs in different districts of Punjab and found them to be severely under staffed and ill equipped. "They can act better as it is difficult for others to reach there due to disruption of communication channels and destruction of road networks."
The Punjab government, he adds, is releasing funds through DCOs that are bureaucrats and have no ownership of these areas.
Dr Qamar uz Zaman Chaudhry is a bit hopeful this time when he shares that the federal government has allocated funds for construction of reservoirs and hydel energy projects in this year’s budget. This is one of the suggestions made in the Framework for Implementation of Climate Change Policy (FICCP).
Others include developing of a mix of strategies for flood management which may include use of dams for managing flood peaks, retarding basins and providing escape channels, undertaking formulation and enforcement of "River Flood Plain" regulations and laws, enhancing forest cover on uphill watershed areas through rapid afforestation and reforestation measures on account of increased intensity of rainfall and flood risks and encouraging resettlement/ relocation of villages outside the flood plains.