Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - After unprecedented flooding, Pakistani officials are working hard to keep the country's largest lake...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - After unprecedented flooding, Pakistani officials are working hard to keep the country's largest lake from overflowing and flooding nearby towns. On Monday, the disaster management agency added 24 more flood deaths to the list.
Floods have killed at least 1,314, including 458 children, because of record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in Pakistan's northern mountains. At least 33 million people have been affected by the floods.
After a summer with record-high temperatures, there were floods. Both the government and the United Nations blamed climate change for the extreme weather and the damage it caused.
Authorities broke into Pakistan's largest freshwater lake on Sunday, forcing up to 100,000 people to leave their homes. The goal was to drain enough water from the lake to keep it from overflowing and flooding more populated areas.
But the lake, which is west of the Indus River in the southern province of Sindh, still has dangerously high water levels.
Jam Khan Shoro, the provincial minister for irrigation, told Reuters that the water level in Manchar Lake has not gone down.
He wouldn't say if there would be another try to drain water from the lake.
The floods are a huge problem for an economy that needed help from the International Monetary Fund even before the floods happened.
The UN has asked for $160 million in aid to help the flood victims, but Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said the damage was much more expensive than that.
"The total damage could be more than $10 billion," Ismail told CNBC in an interview.
"Obviously, that's not enough. Even though Pakistan has few resources, it will have to do a lot of the hard work."
Still, help is coming from other countries.
The foreign ministry said in a statement that aid flights from the UN and countries like Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates arrived on Monday.
In other parts of the region, floods are a threat to crisis-torn Sri Lanka, and rains have made life hard in Bangalore, India, which is a technology hub.
In most of Asia, it rains in the northern summer.
