Shahbaz announces Rs 15m to help flood victims
ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has made an initial allocation of Rs15 million as part of strategy of alleviating the miseries of victims of torrential rains and floods across the province.
“This natural calamity has hit six Punjab districts where around 300,000 of the people have been affected. The Punjab government has also sought financial assistance to the tune of Rs7 billion from the federal government,” PML-N leader Siddiqul Farooq told a news conference here on Tuesday.
Elaborating the salient features of the provincial government’s scheme to provide immediate relief to flood-affected families, Farooq said the provincial government has declared all the affected areas as calamity-hit where revenue and water tax would be waived.
Besides, the provincial government would extend financial assistance of Rs300,000 for each life lost in addition to assessing the real loss of life, property, crops, livestock and infrastructure for the purpose of working out a comprehensive rehabilitation plan.
He said the government has directed all the District Coordination Officers to reach each one of the flood victims. Farooq said, “The huge financial burden to be thus caused does not bother the chief minister.”
He said 72 relief camps have been set up in district Mianwali and people in districts of Muzaffargarh, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur have already been shifted to safer places as an immediate rescue step that would follow a massive work of rehabilitation to offset the impact of the flood disaster as effectively as possible.
According to Farooq the Punjab government was fully conscious of the possibility of outbreak of epidemics, and has dispatched a large number of medical teams to undertake vaccination in all the affected areas.
Besides, 100 trucks of food and safe drinking water have already reached such areas where eatables are also being airdropped from helicopters to the people still marooned in some of the worst hit districts.
Source: The News
Date:8/4/2010
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