ASIA/PAKISTAN-A year after the floods that devastated the country, women are still paying the heaviest toll

Islamabad (Agenzia Fides) - One year after the severe floods that hit the country, women continue to struggle to try to resume their lives and recover their livelihoods. According to a report by the Asian Human Rights Commission, a copy of which was sent to Fides, the 2010 floods were the worst ever to hit Pakistan, recording approximately 2,000 deaths, 20 million displaced or damaged persons, more than a fifth of the country remained under water. This unprecedented flood inflicted catastrophic damage to a country already devastated by the effects of the war led by the USA against terrorism. A year later, despite many displaced people have returned to their homes, very little is known about the real conditions of life, often marked by poverty and violence. In particular the work of women has doubled. While their husbands and the males in the houses of poor families, who are often day laborers, are struggling to find sources of livelihood, women are in fact engaged in rebuilding their damaged houses.
In some small villages and hamlets, they work with bricks and plaster to rebuild their houses made of mud and half-cemented. They never stop: when they finish their job they reach their husbands to help them in the fields. The loss of material goods has increased poverty and further encouraged early marriage which may be limited if anti poverty programmes for women were started, who also suffer from poor health care.
Although pregnant women during the floods were able to take advantage of pre-and postnatal care through the emergency medical field, once the emergency phase was over these women were left in very vulnerable conditions. The children, unable to benefit from an adequate healthy diet, suffer from eating disorders, because all the families who have lost their cattle no longer have milk or permanent sources of income.
In the village of Dera Shahwala, Muzaffargarh district, one of the most severely affected in southern Punjab, road works were carried out, embankments and watercourses restored, however, the problems of livelihood remain. One of the main sources for poor women, without land, in this area is picking cotton. With the loss of crop, they have been unable to find an alternative. In some cases, where the land is totally dominated by coarse sand, there will be no harvest and this will cause a reduction in the farmers’ resources besides depriving women of their main means of subsistence. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 25/08/2011)