Pakistan: Help for the flood victims in Hyderabad

Emergency Aid for the flood victims, a refugee camp. @ACN
Emergency Aid for the flood victims, a refugee camp. @ACN

It was the worst flooding this region has experienced since 1929. Worst affected was the province of Sindh, in the south. The flooding cost the lives of 1,650 people, over 1,100 of them in Sindh province alone. Many others died of diseases resulting from the flooding. Over a million houses were destroyed. The international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) was quick to respond, taking advantage of its numerous contacts within the country in order to reach out to the people and help them, not least as here in the Catholic diocese of Hyderabad, in the south of the country.

Only the brow of the hill emerges from the waters. The people who have taken refuge there are completely surrounded by water. With them they have the small fraction of their possessions that they were able to carry with their bare hands. All the rest has been swept away by the waters. Just a few miles further on, streams of homeless people wander through the ruined streets. Children and old people sit crowded together on wooden carts, while a dog shakes the water from its fur. Images like these quickly spread through the world after the devastating flooding in Pakistan in August 2010. Hyderabad lies in Sindh province, the worst affected area. The River Indus flows right through the centre of this province, normally with very little water in it. But this time the heavy monsoon rains brought more and more water pouring downstream, bursting the banks and inundating houses, fields, bridges and roads and covering an area the size of Austria, Belgium and Switzerland put together. Within minutes millions of people found themselves homeless, and before long diseases like malaria and dysentery began to spread, adding to the acute danger of a cholera epidemic breaking out and claiming yet more lives.

People fled in huge numbers to whatever safety they could find. "There were floods of refugees such as we have never seen before", says Bishop Max J, Rodrigues of the diocese of Hyderabad, describing the situation to ACN. "The people seem quite helpless. They are simply sitting on the roofs of houses, schools or other buildings that are still standing. Many have been wandering around for days without food or water." He continues, "Most of the roads near the flooded regions have been cut off. Some 91 bridges have been either washed away or so badly damaged that access to the flood zone continues to be a major challenge … There is no safe place to sleep or eat, and the lack of drinking water is a major problem."

The Pakistani military and the NGOs did a great deal to help, but the destruction was so vast that it seemed impossible to reach all the flood victims. Time was pressing, for in Pakistan the onset of winter was approaching, and millions of people were still homeless and without any shelter.

Hundreds of poor peasant farmers were devastated by the loss of their simple huts and their few possessions. Most of these farmers are among the heavily oppressed, mainly Hindu tribal peoples of the Kutchi Koli (the origin of the English word "coolie") who work as indentured labourers, toiling in the fields of the large landowners, trying to work off the debts of their forefathers. Every rupee of their meagre wages is already overshadowed by the heavy debts they are forced to pay off. Yet despite this, even a lifetime of working in the fields of these greedy landowners is not enough to pay off these heavy debts and interest payments, which are set so high that in practice they continue to be passed on from father to son. And so the Kutchi Koli are left with no alternative but to continue working, in conditions of near slave labour, for their employers and creditors. Even during the flooding, many of these landowners put their own profit before the welfare of their underlings and as the river levels rose, they in some cases deliberately diverted the water from their own fields into the small plots of land of their workers in order to protect their own vast estates.

Once again it was the poorest of the poor who suffered the most. However, many of the Koli have been attracted by Christianity and have converted to Catholicism and been baptised. The Catholic diocesan community under Bishop Rodrigues in Hyderabad reacted immediately and provided the most needy, including the Kutchi Koli, with food parcels containing rice, flour, salt, chilies, oil, tea and sugar, and the bishop also saw to the distribution of hygiene parcels containing soap, disinfectant, washing powder and a mosquito net. He explains, "As the situation grew worse in the southern part of Sindh province and the fields and villages there were flooded, we shifted the focus of our attention southwards. We split up into rescue teams and I myself travelled with my Caritas team to Jati and Sujawal … We distributed food parcels and water containers to around 100 families. On the way we saw many villages and vast swathes of land that had been inundated. The people who had fled the rising waters were camped on high ground along the main road, without food or shelter and simply waiting for help. It was a painful and unforgettable experience to see how the whole city of Sujawal was underwater and to watch the soldiers and fishermen picking up people in their boats who had been forgotten."

Thanks to the generosity of its benefactors, ACN was able to give €50,000 in emergency aid to the diocese of Hyderabad and so help Bishop Max Rodrigues and his teams to provide real practical aid for around 2,000 families in the form of food and hygiene parcels. The Catholics of Hyderabad diocese are immensely grateful for this gesture of solidarity. "On behalf of all those you have helped, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to your generous benefactors. Through ACN you have helped to ease the lives of several millions of Pakistanis affected by the floods, and we promise to pray for all our benefactors", says Bishop Rodrigues.

The people of Pakistan still need our help, however. In the near future they will have to rebuild their ruined homes and lands and try to find a way of securing the livelihoods of so many people who have lost everything in the floods.

To know about this and many other similar projects in favour of the pastoral needs of the suffering Church, please contact our national offices.