IOM taps UN central emergency response fund to help 6,000 more homeless families in flood-hit Sindh

IOM Pakistan is racing to procure and distribute 6,000 more emergency shelter and non-food relief item kits for flood-displaced families in Sindh, following a USD 1.5 million donation from the UN Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF.)

Over the past six weeks, IOM has already distributed 18,500 similar kits from its contingency stockpiles to local partner NGOs and directly to thousands of Sindhi families camped out on roadsides or on higher ground near their submerged villages.

The new kits, each of which consists of two plastic sheets, ropes, tent poles and pegs blankets, a kitchen set and two solar lanterns, will target displaced families in three of the worst hit districts of Mirpurkhas, Tando Muhammad Khan and Tando Allah Yar.

“The CERF donation of USD 1.5 million to IOM and a further USD 3 million to our IASC Shelter Cluster partners UNHCR and UNHABITAT for emergency shelter will help thousands of families who have lost everything in these floods,” says IOM Pakistan Chief of Mission Hassan Abdel Moneim Mostafa.

“But the needs on the ground remain vast, these people are desperately poor and vulnerable, and with our contingency stockpiles depleted, we urgently need other international donors to step forward,” he adds.

Based on government and independent assessments, the UN believes that nearly 5.5 million people have been affected and at least 1.8 million have been displaced by the floods in Sindh.

While all 23 districts of Sindh have been affected by the 2011 floods, much of the rest of Pakistan was spared, unlike the 2010 floods which caused devastation the entire length of the Indus valley.

But in the far northern province of Gilgit-Baltistan, heavy rains and landslides in late July demolished Tallis, a village in Ghanche district, leaving at least 150 families homeless.

At the request of the provincial government, IOM and humanitarian partner agencies are now trying to build new shelters for them, before the onset of Himalayan winter.