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Pakistanis in the northwest part of the country face “life-threatening shortages” of food following flooding has killed 1,400 and “devastated the lives of far more than three million men and women,” Reuters reports. World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal said, “People have lost their food stocks. The markets aren’t up and operating. Shops have collapsed. Men and women are definitely within the greatest need to have of food” (Ali, 8/4).
IRIN reports: “Shopkeepers were keeping back [food]stock inside the hope prices would rise,” citing 1 shop that is only selling two kilos of flour at a time. Flooded roads and bridges were “hampering” the arrival of goods and aid. “Media reports … say some relief trucks have been looted and there were also claims of aid becoming unfairly distributed, with officials favouring relatives” (8/4).
The floods have also “swept away farmland and devastated livestock in Pakistan’s northwest, costing farmers millions of dollars and sparking demands for government compensation,” Agence France-Presse writes. “Entire villages have been swept away … Dead livestock have been left rotting in the mud. Irrigation systems have been wiped out” (Tarakzai, 8/3).
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