Pakistan situation still critical: UN agencies
By IANSTuesday, October 5, 2010
UNITED NATIONS - The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Unicef have said the flood situation in Pakistan remains quite critical in some parts of the country.
The UNHCR said the situation was worse in Sindh province.
“Since mid-August, floods there (Sindh) have to varying degrees affected almost a third of the province’s 30 million residents and around 1. 6 million people are still displaced,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
The agency has assisted nearly 200,000 displaced people in Sindh with tents, plastic sheets and other relief items.
It said it remains concerned about 1.7 million refugees and 1.1 million conflict-displaced people in other parts of the country like Baluchistan and Khyber Phaktunkhwa.
The Unicef has been hard at work getting Pakistani children back to school.
“Unicef says that during September more schools have opened up as families return to their villages,” Nesirky said.
“As of the end of the month, 2,800 schools were still serving as temporary shelters for more than 660,000 people. This is in addition to the almost 10,000 schools that have been damaged by flooding,” he said.
