Noor Bibi lost his mother and daughter in the catastrophic floods of summer 2022 in Pakistan.
A year later, it still has no roof over its head and government promises of climate-friendly reconstruction already seem to be a thing of the past.
Noor’s family and their neighbors shelter under rudimentary tents in their village of Sohbat Khosa, in the district of Dadu (south).
This shelter offers little protection against the sweltering heat and the coming monsoon rains. Their homes, most of which were demolished by the waters, have not yet been rebuilt.
The villagers, who have lost all means of subsistence with the destruction of agricultural land, are too poor to restore it themselves.
They were just able to raise enough money to build public toilets and a water tank.
Noor, a farm worker in her 60s, is praying for “someone (them) to help build a good house in a high place”. “At least we wouldn’t lose so much” in the event of further flooding, she told AFP.
His wish could be granted. The Alkhidmat Foundation, a Pakistani NGO, plans to build 30 houses in the village.
Caused by torrential monsoon rains, the floods affected a third of the country, killing more than 1,700 people and displacing up to 8 million.
Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world, which is among the most threatened by extreme weather events, has linked these floods to climate change.
At the beginning of the year, the government presented a “Resilient Recovery, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Plan”, the cost of which is estimated at 16.3 billion dollars.
He secured more than $9 billion in international aid pledges dedicated to reconstruction.
The plan is medium term. But a year after the floods, it still only exists on paper. On the ground, adaptation to climate change remains a very distant reality.
In Dadu, like everywhere in the province of Sind, still partially flooded, the absence of the authorities is denounced by the population who, without being aware of the warming, understand the urgency they are facing.
No concerted rehabilitation effort is visible. The few public infrastructures have most often not been repaired and the reconstruction of dwellings is left to local communities or a few NGOs.
“The government doesn’t seem to exist here and if it does anything, it’s just corruption,” said Ali Muhammad, coordinator of Alkhidmat in Dadu.
Pakistan is entangled in a double political and economic crisis which freezes any public initiative. But its structural weaknesses – bad governance and corruption – are also to be pointed out.
“Building back better is expensive and the amount of damage is colossal,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told AFP.
A significant admission, he says “not being able to talk about what the federal government has done or plans to do”. But the Sindh provincial government, led by his party, has launched “a couple of initiatives aimed at not just building back, but building back better”.
One is to “finance the reconstruction of houses through NGOs and charities”. Alkhidmat, like two other NGOs interviewed by AFP, however, has not received public money and is financed entirely by private funds.
Alkhidmat has rebuilt a few dozen homes in Dadu, a drop in the ocean of the 2 million homes destroyed or damaged by floods nationwide.
The foundation should eventually erect 80 houses in the village of Bari Baital, which remained covered by water until the end of November and where the electricity network was not repaired. But that will not be enough to accommodate the thousand inhabitants.
To make them more resistant to future floods, the houses rebuilt by the NGO are raised on a brick base. The walls are masonry with a cement supposed to better protect against water, and the roof is made of reinforced concrete.
“People (here) are not aware of climate change,” said Imtiaz Ali Chandio, the village teacher, who has heard of it but admits not knowing much about it.
All they know is that their village, protected by an earthen dyke from a river a few miles away, has been “a passage for floodwaters for centuries”.
But moving elsewhere is not an option. “Where could we go? All we have is here,” laments Abdulrahim Brohi, an elderly man who had already experienced the terrible floods of 2010.
“We already can’t afford to rebuild our homes here, so how could we afford to buy land elsewhere?”
Popular with tourists for its enchanting landscapes, the Swat Valley in the northwest of the country also suffered massive damage last summer.
Hundreds of hotels, restaurants, businesses and homes perched on the banks of the Swat River had been destroyed or damaged by its flood.
To avoid another disaster, the local authorities have “imposed a complete ban on the construction of any type of building on the banks”, Irfanullah Khan Wazir, a senior official in Swat district, told AFP.
But the ban is far from being respected. In Bahrain, a small mountain resort whose lower part had been submerged by water, a number of shops, restaurants and hotels are being renovated or rebuilt a few meters from the river. Even the mosque was rebuilt on its former site.
“People engage in illegal construction at night on weekends, but (the authorities) pay no attention to it. Their silence is perplexing,” observes Zafar Ali, a hotel manager.
His establishment, which was badly damaged, is being rebuilt. It is located barely twenty meters from the river, but in an authorized area, he swears.
All the same, he had the protective wall on the bank doubled in height. But moving the hotel elsewhere was not considered, its location by the river guaranteeing the prosperity of the business.
“Tourists want to be able to open their windows and see the river outside. Hotels that are built further away have difficulty covering their expenses,” he explains.
In Swat, too, the inaction of the authorities is denounced. The main road along the river has been reopened, but entire sections of bitumen are still torn out.
Hoteliers, restaurateurs and traders say they have not been compensated. Only some people who lost their homes received compensation of 400,000 rupees (1,300 euros), which is however very insufficient to be able to rebuild.
Muhammad Ishaq, a tailor from Bahrain, saw his house swallowed up by the waves. He has still not been compensated and had to go live with his father, a little higher up the mountain.
He had built his house by the river to have water at will. Life is tougher in the paternal house, which has no running water. But if he ever manages to afford a new home, he admits it will have to be “away from the river”.
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06/06/2023 08:19:06 – District de Dadu (Pakistan) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
