Govt to shut down National Flood Response Centre: Ahsan Iqbal

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal said Monday that coordinated efforts between federal, and provincial governments and all institutions concerned helped mitigate flood damages.

Addressing a National Flood Response Coordination Centre (NFRCC) function, he said flood damages could have been much more, however, collaboration and coordinated efforts helped avoid a huge tragedy. Appreciating the NFRCC’s role, the minister said that the world was pleasantly surprised over how Pakistan handled such a huge calamity with less human loss. He said the capability and coordination for disaster management under the umbrella of NFRCC played a great role in helping the country cope with the challenge. “This shows the power of collaboration,” he said, adding no matter how great a challenge if we have the ability to collaborate, we can handle it.

He said that efforts of all three services, provinces, private sector, humanitarian organisations, civil society and friends of Pakistan were positively synergized and it had a huge impact in mitigating the losses. He thanked all people concerned on behalf of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for the hard work and efforts they had put in during the recent floods.

He said that NFRCC was created for the specific purpose of emergency response and it had successfully completed its mission and is now dissolved. However, the minister added, it does not mean the challenge has ended. He said challenges were still there however they would be dealt with in a new format and institutional setting with provinces, adding relevant departments would monitor the rehabilitation and reconstruction effort that was going on.

The minister said that the government had prepared a framework for making Pakistan a climate-resilient country, adding the framework would be presented before the international community. He said Pakistan’s economy, which was already struggling, was inflicted over $30 billion losses. However, he added, with the help of social support, the government managed to come out of the crisis mostly at its own resources. He said that Pakistan was the most vulnerable country facing climate change. He said its principle stand had been accepted internationally during the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference that the countries responsible for global warming should accept their responsibility and help victim countries.