Over 160,000 ‘flood affected’ people in Pakistan still displaced: UN spokesman
By ANIWednesday, January 26, 2011
ISLAMABAD - UN spokesman Martin Nesirky has claimed that over 160,000 ‘flood affected’ people are still displaced in Pakistan nearly six months after the tragedy.
“Although this is a substantial decrease from peak levels in the fall, where nearly 3.3 million people were living in camps, a substantial population is still in need of help,” Xinhua quoted Nesirky, as saying.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has said many of those people have lost their livelihood, are badly in need of money for transportation and re-building their homes.
In the past six months, the UNHCR has reportedly provided emergency shelter to nearly two million people.
The devastating floods had struck northern Pakistan in July last year, and spread towards the south damaging villages along the Indus River, and affecting some 20 million people. At the height of the crisis in September and October, an estimated 3.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) were accommodated in camps.
The floods damaged or destroyed an estimated 1.7 million homes. The remaining IDPs are sheltered in more than 240 camps and other settlements. (ANI)
