NEW YORK: American print and electronic media is giving wide coverage to the devastation caused by fast-flowing flood waters in Pakistan that Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman has called a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster” of “epic proportions.”
The media is focusing on the relief work done in difficult situations across the country by government agencies and humanitarian organizations and pointing out that the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has appealed for international help to deal with the crisis.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan-American community is busy raising funds and the American-Pakistani Political Action Committee (APPAC), which is headed by Dr. Ijaz Ahmad, has already collected more than half a million dollars.
On Friday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Masood Khan, made an impassioned appeal to the Pakistani-American community to step forward and help the flood affectees in Pakistan.
To date, 66 districts in Southern Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan have been declared calamity hit, and officials said the rainfall in coming days is likely to wreak havoc in other areas.
Assad Chaudhry, an APPAC board member, said that donations are pouring in, and the money raised t would be deposited in Pakistan government’s accounts devoted to flood relief.
Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister for Religious Harmony Maulana Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi on Sunday said that hoarding and Illegal profiteering is haram (unfair) and people would be held accountable on the day of judgment.
Talking to a private news channel, he said that price hike in days of calamity and disaster was illegal and a very shameful act, slamming the mafias for spearheading this act.
He urged the government to take strict actions against those raising prices of essential items.
Tahir remarked that lack of punitive actions had emboldened the hoarders and profiteers who charge exorbitant prices and try to create artificial supply issues.
He suggested that for rehabilitation of flood affectees all political parties, their members, federal and provincial governments to collectively work together shunning differences.
Tahir Ashrafi has called the affluent people to play their role by paying their respective zakats for flood victims, also urging the elites and NGOs to come forward and contributein this testing time.
