Pakistan Floods, One Year on

Ghulam Mustafa, based in Sanghar, Sindh has set up a small shop on the road which connects different villages.

He used cash provided to him by Oxfam's partner, the Strengthening Participatory Organization, to open it.

"I did not have this shop before but I had been wanting to have something of my own and when we got the cash assistance I immediately made this.

"I lost one of my arms to an accident. It is difficult for a person with any disability to work." he says.

He earns a PKR 1000/- (£2.73) every day from his shop.

"If the profit keeps running than I will start another shop as well. Many people who have received this amount have invested it in a business because if such clamities keep on hitting us then we need to think ahead of our times.

"The last year has been very challenging on all of us. None of us knew if we will survive or not.

"The uncertainty of life is the biggest uncertainty.

"I think we are all trying to be mindful with our earning."

Kizabo and her community had been using a pit toilet for a very long time. The community had no resources to build themselves a toilet.

“We never had a toilet here," Kizabo says.

"Imagine going out in the dark with dogs howling around.

"It was both scary and unsafe."

After the floods people struggled due to the damage to the area. The flood water destroyed pit toilets.

"After sundown I would not let my daughter go out."

As part of early recovery interventions Oxfam with its local partners is constructing facilities in the flood hit areas of Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan.

"Oxfam and its partner Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) have built us these latrines which are not only accessible but safe.”

"When a family loses a house, food security is connected to it and there are many other things attached to it." Kanwal from Oxfam Pakistan says.

"The families are in the process of slowly getting back to rebuilding their homes.

"Some of the homes, they are partially made because for rebuilding you need money and here, the most important source of livelihood is agriculture and second is livestock. Both of these suffered considerable damage.

"So they are rebuilding their fields. People lost their livestock. Of course, they are gradually trying to get back to harvesting the crops.

"They need assistance in terms of seed inputs and rehabilitating their land.

"As Oxfam, we are still very much involved in the rehabilitation phase through our early recovery efforts."

This is loss and damage. People are still recovering.

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References

• The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that 1.7 million hectares of agricultural land had been destroyed
• In its latest report, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) finds 10.5 million food insecure