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Aid For Pakistan Flood Victims

Severe floods in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province have reportedly destroyed over one-hundred villages and caused massive damage to homes, buildings and bridges in the suburbs of Peshawar and the adjoining Khyber Agency. Over thirty people are reported dead. Many others are at risk from water-bourn diseases, hunger, thirst, and exposure. Infrastructure, including bridges, electrical power lines, and roads are badly damaged. Maize, tomato, sugarcane, and other crops have been largely destroyed and many livestock killed.

To assist the victims of this disaster, the United States government is providing fifty-thousand dollars in emergency relief to people in flood-affected areas of the province. The money will provide jerry cans and tankered potable water, kerosene lamps, cooking stoves, fuel, and kitchen utensils to approximately five-thousand-four-hundred individuals in nine-hundred households in Patwar Bala and Patwar Payen of Peshawar district.

The relief assistance being provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development is crucial in the early stages of a natural disaster to avert further injury or loss of life. USAID provided similar assistance to Pakistan during flooding in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Immediately following the October 2005 earthquake, USAID provided relief that saved lives in the earthquake-affected areas. It has since helped rebuild some of the hardest-hit areas.

Since 2002, the U.S. government has provided more than two-billion dollars to Pakistan to improve economic growth, education, health, and governance and to assist with earthquake reconstruction.

Referring to this year's devastating floods, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said, "the United States extends its condolences to the families affected by this terrible disaster." This assistance from the American people, said Ambassador Patterson, will provide essential items to help the flood victims. "We stand by you," she said, "in this trying time."