Pakistan Foreign Minister and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has lashed out at former Prime Minister Imran Khan for holding political gatherings despite the devastation due to floods in the country.
He said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief is busy in “political point-scoring.”
In an interview with an international news network on Saturday, Bilawal said that there will be time for doing other activities including politics but at the moment it is time to assist the flood victims.
“Our rivals whether in the government or in the opposition, always lacked interest in such matters,” he said in the interviews as quoted by The Express Tribune.
He said that the rain-related floods have wreaked havoc in Pakistan and the devastations are spread from one corner of the country to the other.
“Rain-related floods have ruined peoples’ shelters, crops and everything. Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit and Sindh provinces have been hit very badly. The Sindh province has undergone the worst of all-time high catastrophe,” he said, as per The Express Tribune.
A United Nations relief agency in its report said that at least 2,18,000 houses were completely destroyed and 458 thousand houses were damaged in the past two weeks in Pakistan floods.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 218 thousand houses were completely destroyed, 458 thousand houses damaged, 2 million acres of crops impacted, 794 thousand livestock lost, 937 deaths and 1343 injured in the past two weeks.
116 districts were affected after “rainfall nationwide is 2.87 times higher than the national 30-year average, with some provinces receiving more than five times as much rainfall as their 30-year average. The humanitarian situation is expected to worsen.
Over 218,000 houses have been destroyed and a further 452,000 damaged since 14 June, according to the NDMA. Livelihoods are also being heavily impacted – more than 793,900 livestock – a critical source of sustenance and livelihoods for many families – have died, of which some 63 per cent are in Balochistan and 25 per cent in Punjab.
Meanwhile, Presidents of Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates have called on Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and extended sympathy over the devastation caused by the floods.
In a telephonic conversation with Shehbaz Sharif, the President expressed grief over the loss of lives in flash floods and assured all-out support to the government and people of Pakistan.
The unprecedented rainfall and floods have created havoc in Pakistan.