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This is a follow up to last week’s article on snow, high tide, floods and preventive maintenance.
While in Manila, Philippines, a couple of months ago, I had occasion to meet and talk with several persons who had been assigned the challenging task of flood damage assessment in Pakistan.
Around the same time, I had also heard of the damage caused by floods in India and China..jpg)
A few weeks prior to my trip, I received an inquiry from a multi-lateral development organisation about my immediate availability to work with a multi-disciplinary team to perform flood damage assessment in China. I was however unable to make myself available due to other engagements.
It is useful to gain insight into the gravity and implications of the floods in Pakistan – a member of our South Asian family. Strangely, we in Sri Lanka do not adequately feel the pains of Pakistan, Bangladesh or even neighbouring India, probably since disasters happen frequently in those parts, while we are spared.
Pakistan floods
The July/August floods in Pakistan affected 20 million people – more than 10 per cent of the population. As recently as six weeks ago, I learned that a landmass the size of England was yet submerged.
The horrendous details I gathered from my consulting colleague who had been on site for a couple of months, were sad indeed. More so since I had over the last two decades met with several economists, accountants, specialists and writers from Pakistan and thus developed a certain affinity with its people. Pakistan has undergone frequent instability, not only through natural disasters but also through manmade disasters.
Damage and Needs Assessment
In a media release at a Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 14 October, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank stated that the floods that swept across Pakistan since July had caused an estimated $9.7 billion in damage to infrastructure, farms and homes. This was outlined in a Damage and Needs Assessment (DNA) survey conducted nationwide..jpg)
The ADB Country Director for Pakistan, Rune Stroem said that “The $9.7 billion is almost double the amount of damage caused by the 2005 Pakistan earthquake,” and Rachid Benmessaoud, World Bank Country Director for Pakistan, believes that now that the DNA has been completed, “our job as friends of Pakistan is to help the country respond to this enormous reconstruction challenge.”
In carrying out the assessment, ADB and World Bank teams examined the extent of the damage in 15 key sectors across Pakistan. Included in the estimate was the direct damage, indirect losses and reconstruction costs.
Poverty stricken for the next 10 years
The DNA found that the agriculture and livestock sectors have been the worst hit, followed by complete or partial damage to a large number of houses. Power supply has been pre-emptively cut off in many areas due to the fear that fires could be caused by floodwater reaching live cables.
In addition to the DNA, there are other estimates that it will take 10 years and US$ 15 billion to repair and restore the damage in Pakistan. The Country Director for Pakistan of Red R – a disaster relief charity – is on record to say that the floods would mire Pakistan into being a poverty stricken country for the next 10 years.
23 cities and thousands of communities
While I do not know the exact status today, as of mid October, three months after the floods, over 23 cities and thousands of communities remained cut off and deluged. 60% of the people who were affected by the floods (over 14 million people) were inaccessible due to flooded roads or landslides.
Roads have been hit hard particularly at the district and village levels, and irrigation facilities have also suffered serious damage. 3.4 Mha of crops have been destroyed by floods. The floods affected one-fifth of the country. The populous southern Sindh Province was the worst affected.
DFID and bridge building
While several minor bridges have collapsed, certain major bridges have held up because the Government had completed a scheme to build a number of suspension bridges that are apparently less vulnerable to flood waters (if this is indeed the case here is a thought for our road and bridge engineers in Sri Lanka). It is said that a number of new bridges will be required on the Indus – Pakistan’s largest river at 3,180 kms.
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) is bringing forward a US$ 15 million bridge building project in partnership with the Government. This was previously scheduled for 2011. DFID funded engineers have been in Pakistan since early August.
The IMF and US$ 450 million
At a presentation on the Regional Economic Outlook of Middle East and Central Asia last week, I learned that the full extent of the economic damage is not yet determined but that it is estimated that Pakistan’s real GDP growth is unlikely to exceed 2¼ per cent, in 2010/11, compared to the projected growth of four per cent prior to the floods.
Agriculture, which accounts for 21 per cent of GDP and 45 per cent of employment, has been hit hard. A total of 10 per cent of total cropped area has been flooded and many livestock lost. Manufacturing has also been affected. The IMF has responded with a US$ 450 million emergency assistance facility in September.
Ban Ki Moon sees stars
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon says that the flooding in Pakistan is the worst disaster he has ever seen and that he had witnessed many natural disasters around the world, but had seen nothing like this. The UN has declared that this disaster is worse than the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the 2005 Pakistan Earthquake, and the 2004 Indian Tsunami combined and commenced a programme, to deliver aid by aircraft.
Flood defence related thoughts for us
The brief personal insights into the country and several of its people, which I was privileged and indeed touched to gain over the years, prompted me to study the Pakistan floods a little more than I normally would. I did so also to see whether there were any learning outcomes for us, in Sri Lanka, given our own floods.
The incomplete relief measures and unresolved issues, which continue to intimidate any and everyone who is on site in Pakistan to this day, and so many months after the floods, is mind-boggling. Here are a few thoughts for us, which go through my mind. Perhaps we should:
Simultaneously seek and obtain assistance from institutions such as DFID for example, to stress test, evaluate and strengthen our bridges and dams.
Tolls and user fees
Our expectations of Government, donor and development partners, must also take into consideration the need for us to progress to a stage where we as citizens begin to pay a user fee for the infrastructure that we expect and take for granted. That era must dawn..jpg)
There are many public-private partnership thoughts. The private sector and chambers of commerce, rather than passively contributing to maintaining the status quo regarding these possibilities, must work together with Government, perhaps, the Secretary to the Treasury, to contribute new thinking.
Many years ago while serving on an advisory committee for the office of the Mayor of Colombo (during the term of office of Karu Jayasuriya) we considered municipal bonds and the Attorney General even cleared the concept.
Innovative financing strategies can help build defensive infrastructure and fund better equipped and more proactive maintenance strategies. Users of roads and other facilities will require to pay a toll, a charge, and share in the cost of infrastructure and maintenance. It can be a win-win for all.
Pakistan – Beyond floods
The accounts and thoughts described above are appropriate and adequate for a business paper. They were cold and clinical and had thoughts for policy planners and the private sector.
The following segment of the article is for a wider reading audience and will share thoughts of Pakistan, which are warmer and necessary for balance. Even if there were no floods, Pakistan would yet be a nation of regrettable instability.
I thought I might elaborate on what drives my affection for the people of Pakistan. Any writing of mine on this country would be incomplete if I do not do so. It would also be unfair by those I know. The reminiscences and anecdotes that follow may lighten the heaviness of the heart-rending account of the floods, which I described.
Troubled Karachi
My first visit to Karachi in the mid 1990s was to assist the SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry to develop a road map and an action plan on behalf of the German Foundation-Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, (now better known as Fur Die Freiheit).
On a second visit, I was advised by airport authorities not to go to Karachi due to clashes between factions. I stayed in an airport area hotel and rang a colleague in Karachi. I remember him holding his phone to his window and asking me to listen to gunshots (in his immediate neighbourhood), which I distinctly heard.
The next morning, he called me to say that he had survived and escorted me in to the city. He stayed by my side until my meetings were over and while I stole into several shops to buy a few gifts for my wife.
Islamabad and Lahore
A few years later it was to Islamabad to make a presentation on behalf of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka. On this trip, I recall travelling to Lahore from Islamabad with an accounting friend, who refused to let me take a taxi to my hotel, had me cancel my reservation and drove me to his home at 12 midnight.
His wife and four-year-old daughter were woken up and the master bedroom converted to my guest room where I slept overnight while he and his family moved to a smaller room. He refused to change his decision. This was his hospitality. His father even made me a sandwich!
The next day, he took leave from the multinational company he worked with and together with his wife and daughter, drove me around many places of tourist interest in Lahore, including the much-visited and written about, sensitive border.
Mountainous Bhurban
On another occasion it was to Bhurban – a mountainous holiday resort, where we won the bid to host the prestigious CAPA conference of the 23 nation strong Confederation of Asian Pacific Accountants, having competed with four countries.
This win, on Pakistan soil, led to many other wins for the local profession and for me personally. We progressed beyond the shores of South Asia and became more internationally known and recognised.
Benazir’s assassination
Three years ago, I had occasion to work on a project in the Southern Caucasus while an Indian consulting colleague, was undertaking the identical project, in Pakistan. We were in close touch and regularly shared our insights into the respective countries.
On more than three occasions she had to abandon the project and revert to Delhi. Then it was the run up to the elections and after days, weeks and months of instability and heart-rending events, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. That project in Pakistan – one which would have been of benefit to the country and the people of Pakistan – was stalled.
Vivacious Fatima Bhutto
Last November (2009), at the Park Street Mews, in Sri-Lanka, I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with and subsequently corresponding via email with the lovely and vivacious 28-year-old, Fatima Bhutto – Benazir’s niece. Fatima is Benazir’s Harvard and Oxford educated brother Murtaza’s daughter – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s granddaughter.
Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, while her father Murtaza Bhutto, was in exile during the military regime of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. She grew up in Damascus Syria, while Murtaza was in exile there.
Apparently, her father was mother and father to her while they lived in Syria, in a one-roomed apartment where her father cooked and washed clothes for her. Her father was killed by the Police, in 1996 in Karachi, during the premiership of his sister Benazir Bhutto.
Fatima’s horrific experiences were all due to the politics of Pakistan. Finally and fortunately, she pursued her studies in London and New York and is today, a well-established poet and writer. She has steered away from politics up to now. I hope she continues to do so.
The blasphemy law
Even as recently as today, the news of the jailed Christian woman (a young mother in Lahore), in accordance with the provisions of a new blasphemy law, in this overwhelmingly Muslim nation, is unbelievable.
These are perhaps a sample of what many young people have had to and will continue to experience, robbing them of their rightful potential. Sadly these are all manmade disasters and well within our control. Despite all the help it gets to recover from natural disasters, better sense has to prevail on many other fronts, if Pakistan is to truly progress.
