IOM trucks loaded the shipment at Chaklala Airbase and are currently driving to Multan in Punjab province, where IOM and the group of 41 relief agencies that form the Emergency Shelter Cluster are establishing a new hub, in close cooperation with the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA.)
Shelter quality plastic sheet, which is in short supply in Pakistan, is desperately needed by an estimated 300,000 families whose homes have been damaged or destroyed by Pakistan’s worst ever floods, according to the cluster, which is coordinated by IOM.
The Multan hub will take deliveries of shelter and other relief goods shipped in by road and air and dispatch them to the worst flood-affected areas. It will join existing hubs in Islamabad and Peshawar.
An additional shelter hub will open in Sukkur in Sindh province later this week. At least 105,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed in Punjab and Sindh, according to the government.
The USAID items will arrive in Multan later today, together with a consignment of 3,000 plastic sheets and 3,000 kitchen sets procured by IOM, which is expected to arrive by truck from Karachi.
IOM today delivered 10 trucks to the Multan Commissioner’s Office to support government aid distribution. Priority distribution areas from Multan are Muzaffargargh district (Kot Addu, Sanawan, Mehmood Kot tehsils) and Rajanpur district (Janpur, Rojhan tehsils.) Rajanpur is not currently accessible by road from Multan and relief goods may have to be delivered by government helicopter.
Last night IOM Islamabad also took delivery of 9,000 shelter kits - comprising plastic sheet, poles and ropes - donated by the UK Department of International Development (DFID). The kits are being trucked to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province today. IOM expects to take delivery of and distribute another 1,000 tents, 24,000 buckets and 48,600 blankets donated by DFID in the course of this week.
All the items will be distributed to flood victims by IOM and its local and international partners. In Multan, these include local NGOs SPO and NRSP. Teams on the ground try to work with village elders before any aid distribution to identify the families most in need. They then provide the families with tokens that can be exchanged for tents and other relief items when the distribution takes place.
For more information on IOM’s activities in Pakistan and flood relief pictures, please go to: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pakistan. For more information on the work of the Emergency Shelter Cluster please go to: https://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/.
For additional information please contact IOM Islamabad. Chris Lom, Tel. +92.3085204684. Email: clom@iom.int. Or Saleem Rehmat, Tel. +92.3008560341. Email: srehmat@iom.int
