Poor global community support to Pak flood victims extraordinary: UN official

NEW YORK - A United Nations official has urged the global community to step up its response to flood-hit Pakistan on an urgent basis.

Louis-George Arsenault, Director of Emergency Operations for UNICEF in New York, described the lack of support as “quite extraordinary”, and described the humanitarian crisis as the largest “in decades”.

Arsenault spoke as the International Monetary Fund was due to start talks with Pakistani officials in Washington to assess how best to give help.

Arsenault said: “One of the major challenges that we have which is quite extraordinary is the lack of level of support from the international community. Right now, our level of needs in terms of funding is huge compared to what we’ve been receiving, even though this is the largest, by far, humanitarian crisis we’ve seen in decades.”

Overall, about 1,600 people have been killed and 20 million affected by the floods in Pakistan.he Pakistan government has said the cost of rebuilding after the floods could be as high as 15 billion dollars. (ANI)