Pakistan floodwaters surging down the Indus River may converge this week with higher-than-normal sea tides to inundate new areas east of Karachi, the country’s largest city.
“Coastal areas are expected to be highly affected since high tides in the Arabian Sea will create a backflow of water” into the Indus delta, Ajmal Shad, a director in the government’s Flood Forecasting Division, said today.
Four weeks of heavy monsoon rains have pushed the flood wave from northwest Pakistan to the far south, close to the cities of Hyderabad and Thatta. Thousands of new evacuees will further stretch emergency relief for up to 20 million uprooted people. Finance Secretary Salman Siddique said today his government is counting on the delivery of $6 billion in aid promised by international donors.
Officials say they have evacuated residents from low-lying areas on the lower Indus, including in Hyderabad, which with 1.5 million people is Pakistan’s sixth-largest city. The higher tides are expected to peak on August 25 and 26, according to the weather-monitoring website MyForecast.com.
Many of about 300,000 people living at Shahadkot, 280 kilometres north of Hyderabad, evacuated the city as waters threatened to burst through protective dikes, Pakistan’s Express News channel said, citing local officials.
IMF meeting
While the floods have slashed by half Pakistan’s expected economic growth rate this year, the government will not seek to re-schedule its loans from the International Monetary Fund when Pakistani and IMF officials meet today in Washington, Siddique said in a telephone interview.
The meeting will aim “to evaluate the macroeconomic impact of the floods, assess the measures they are taking to address this impact, and discuss ways in which the IMF can assist Pakistan at this difficult juncture,” said Masood Ahmed, the IMF director for the Middle East and Central Asia, in a statement issued on August 21.
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A deteriorating economy forced Pakistan to seek IMF help in 2008 to avoid defaulting on overseas debt. That loan was augmented in 2009 and extended through the end of this year.
While the growing international response to Pakistan’s month-long floods, that have killed 1,600 people, is “very positive,” said Siddique, “it is important that aid pledged materialises.”
Pakistani government and health officials will meet with international aid groups tomorrow to plan a coordinated fight against diseases such as dysentery that are spreading in the wake of the most extensive flooding in the 63-year history of the Pakistani state.