Bangladesh has suspended work on development projects to focus on repairing damage from floods that have swept across almost two-thirds of the country and killed more than 670 people reports the World Bank press review Friday.
– Implementation of all projects under the current years annual development plan will remain suspended until the country completed emergency post-flood repair and rehabilitation activities, finance secretary Zakir Ahmed Khan said.
The governments development program for the year is set at 3,7 billion US dollar, with 47 percent to be paid by foreign donors. The government had allocated 270 million dollar for immediate flood repairs, Khan added.
The UN World Food Program has assessed the damage bill to farms, factories and infrastructure in from the floods, at 7 billion US dollar with more than 10 million Bangladeshis homeless. The government would work with international agencies like the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and Islamic Development Bank to assess flood damage and repairs, Khan said.
The Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) also reports that the government has started massive and coordinated agricultural rehabilitation programs by bringing about 1,9 million flood-hit farmer families under it in the first phase through distribution of seed and fertilizer among them.
This is the first time the government has brought all flood affected small and marginal farmers of the country under the agricultural rehabilitation program. Each family is being given 5 kilograms of seed and 25 kilograms of fertilizer free of cost. The government would spend about Taka 124 crore for the purpose.
Out of the total amount, Taka 49 crore has already been disbursed at field-levels. Buffer stocks of seeds and seedlings are also being built. OANA further notes that the WFP is likely to make a global appeal for food aid on Monday for Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, UNICEF has sent out a plea for 13 million US dollar to protect the health of the children and women hit by the floods in Bangladesh. Sixty percent of the 1,5 million people currently squatting temporary shelters are children. They are the group most exposed to the explosion of diseases.
UNICEF also fears, as so often happens when natural disasters occur, that children, and especially girls, will be kidnapped and trafficked.
Chinese Xinhua adds that more than 3.370 medical teams are working around the clock, and some 777 medical teams have been kept stand-by to combat an epidemic of diarrhea that rose to nearly 10.000 affected individuals in the country. Unofficial estimates put the figure much higher than the given number.
While diarrhea diseases are posing a serious threat in urban and crowed places like the shelter centers, other diseases like dysentery, abdominal pain and skin diseases also spread quickly among the flood victims.
UN officials here said health crisis was likely to be a major issue of the UN flash appeal for Bangladesh and they were likely to seek more than 43 million US dollar for the countrys health and nutrition sector alone.
The Economist meanwhile writes that according to Muhammad Saidur Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Center, a non-government group, what is needed to avoid a similar crisis in the future is to reduce the risks to the vulnerable poor and landless, by helping them raise the level of their houses, improving early-warning systems and, above all, helping them generate an income, part of which they can use to make themselves safer.
UN Resident Coordinator, Douglas Coutts, hopes an influx of aid will also allow “food-for-work” on repairs and expansions to dykes and embankments; silted-up rivers need dredging.
Some things, however, are beyond the control of Bangladesh and its foreign donors. Many trace the flooding to deforestation and overgrazing higher upstream, in neighboring India, Nepal and Tibet, which hence absorb less water, increasing the flow downstream.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
