UNITED NATIONS, Sep 07 (APP): With United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres getting ready to leave for Pakistan Wednesday night to see for himself the havoc wreaked by what he calls “a monsoon on steroids”, the UN team in the country and its partners to continue to provide relief materials to flood-stricken people, a UN Spokesman said Tuesday.
The UN chief will be accompanied, among others, by Martin Griffiths, the world body’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, during the two-day visit to Pakistan, which begins on Sept. 9.
The secretary-general, along with his delegation, will inspect flood-affected areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces. He will leave Islamabad for New York on Sept. 11.
At his regular noon briefing in New York, Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that food and cash assistance has been delivered to at least 336,000 affected people in Balochistan.
Distributions are currently underway for 117,000 people in Sindh, he said.
In addition, the spokesman the UN team has provided 32 metric tons of emergency supplies to support children and women, including medicines and medical supplies, water purifying tablets, safe delivery kits, and therapeutic nutritional supplements.
An airlift operation from Dubai, established by the UN and partners, will focus on the worst affected areas of southern Sindh province, he said.
The first three of nine scheduled flights arrived on Monday with 40,000 sleeping mats, 15,000 kitchen sets and 5,000 tarpaulins. An additional six flights are scheduled in the coming days.
More than 1,300 people have died and over 12,700 have been injured by the floods. Over 1.1 million houses have been damaged and some 560,000 destroyed.
Over 630,000 people are reportedly living in relief camps across the country, most of them in the Sindh province, the spokesman said. Many more displaced people are living with host communities.
Access remains difficult with over 5,700 km of roads damaged and 246 bridges damaged or destroyed, the spokesman said.
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