Kildare people urged by NGO to give assistance after devastating floods in Pakistan

Kildare people have been urged by Maynooth-based Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide to help responding to the devastating floods sweeping across Pakistan, which has affected over 33 million people and destroyed millions of acres of food crops.

The monsoon floods have so far resulted in over 1,000 deaths, including 348 children, and destroyed and damaged close to one million homes, 149 bridges and 3,451km of roads.

“We are responding to a very serious humanitarian situation with a significantly high number of deaths and the numbers continuing to rise every hour,” said Concern’s Pakistan acting Country Director, Sherzada Khan.

He added: “Our teams are responding in provinces of Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab providing relief packages to people trying to survive this crisis.

“Many have lost their homes and livelihoods with the province of Sindh alone having 4.5 million people displaced, close to the entire population of Ireland.

The magnitude and scale of the destruction to the country cannot be under-estimated.

“Concern’s response includes multi-purpose cash assistance to enable extremely vulnerable families to buy essential items that they need now, such as food, medicine and makeshift tents.

“We are also providing emergency hygiene and dignity kits, which contain items like soap and menstrual pads, to help protect the health of the population at risk.

“We are continually assessing the needs as the flooding worsens and we are especially worried about the destruction of millions of acres of crops in what are already very poor and vulnerable communities. Around 90 per cent of agricultural land in the areas where we work are currently submerged in water.

Anyone who would like to support Concern’s Pakistan Floods Emergency Appeal can go to concern.net/donate/pakistan- floods-emergency-appeal or call 0818 211 844.