People return to relief camps as monsoon hits Sindh again

Overnight rains in rural Sindh have forced tens of people back into the relief camps set up after heavy rains caused huge floods last month, leaving over a million people stranded or homeless in the southern Pakistani province. "If the rain is very severe, it will cause problems for the Sindh government. We will have to reorganise ourselves, and our strategy will have to be revised," Salahuddin Haider, the provincial government's information adviser, told IRIN from Karachi. The Sindh government declared an emergency after the heavy rains in July, said to be the heaviest for over a decade, inundated extensive tracts of land across the province and some parts of the neighbouring province of Balochistan, destroying crops and leaving the rural populace destitute. "Most people, who had sought shelter in the relief camps here, had returned home after the waters receded. Now, they’re all coming back, by the families," Mohammed Aslam, an official of the aid organisation, Edhi Welfare Trust (EWT), told IRIN from Badin in rural Sindh. Already a region with the lowest social indicators, Badin was the worst-affected district when the deluge started, with almost 500,000 people said to have seen their lives devastated by the floods. Authorities struggled to provide aid, medication and food to thousands of people who flocked in to relief camps set up by the EWT, dozens of other NGOs and the army, with aid, both financial and in kind, being pledged by multilateral and bilateral donor organisations. But, impressive as the response by international aid organisations to the Sindh government’s appeal was, what was received was sometimes insufficient. "People need more food. They’ve been getting tents and other stuff, but, to be very honest, they don’t know how to use them. What they really need is food," Maj Iftikhar Khattak, an officer at the army's monitoring unit in Badin, told IRIN. "The supplies that are being sent are very welcome, but these people need much, much more - perhaps as much as 40 percent more of what’s been provided to them so far," he asserted. An official at the Karachi meteorological office told IRIN that the rains were seasonal monsoon showers and that more rain had been forecast for the next 24 hours.