Piles of debris including bricks, bits of wood, concrete and broken household goods are becoming visible throughout flood-ravaged Muzaffargarh district in the southern province of Punjab, as floodwaters begin to recede. Muzaffargarh city and the towns and villages around it were evacuated in early August. Many of the 750,000 people forced to flee are now trickling back to try to resume some kind of normality.
In his village on the outskirts of Muzaffargarh city, Saleem Shahid (13), with his parents and three siblings, rummage through a pile of destroyed belongings in their house. The structure itself is badly damaged but still partially intact. “I am looking for my school textbooks and pencils,” says Saleem, gazing at a few drenched, mud-stained pages in his hand. “If I can find even a few things I may be able to go back to school.”
Saleem’s father, Bakhtiar Ahmed, lost two cows, and his maize and vegetable crops in the floods. “I don’t think we will be able to send the children back to their private school. It is impossible now to raise money for fees, books and uniforms and I need their help to work the land,” says Ahmed.
Maurizio Guiliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says that “8.6 million children under 18 are affected. We are very concerned because they are very vulnerable.”
According to the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), 1.6 million children have been affected by damaged schools, or because the schools are being used as shelters. The UN agency has a six-month plan to meet schooling needs, starting in the first two months with the creation of temporary learning spaces in camps. “An assessment of damage to schools is now on so needs can be established,” says Unicef’s emergency officer Fawwad Shah.
Estimates are still coming in as to the number of school structures affected. OCHA’s August 23 situation report observes: “Some 7,820 schools are now reported to have been fully or partially damaged in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan Administered Kashmir, and about 4,935 schools are being used as relief shelters. A decrease in the number of schools being used as shelters has been reported from KPK and Sindh.”
According to Save the Children Fund (USA), over 5,500 schools have been damaged across the country, while 5,000 others are being used as shelters for displaced families. “Rebuilding educational infrastructure after the water recedes is going to be a daunting task. The education sector in Pakistan, especially in the rural areas, had been poor even before the floods, but now the situation is particularly dire,” says Ian Wolverton, Save the Children’s spokesman in Pakistan.
(Excerpted and adapted from www.irinnews.org)