ISLAMABAD – The Balochistan government has declared drought emergency inthe entire province owing to the dry spell prevailing for the last 2 to 3years whereas as around 24 districts were facing serious drought situation.
Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) had already issued three alerts ofdrought early warning on June 6, September 6 and December 1, 2018 toNational Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), PDMAs and other concerneddepartments.During the third alert below normal rainfall was recorded over the southernparts of the country as predicted by Met office. Rainfall deficit wasexperienced over the provinces of Sindh (-71.9 per cent), KhyberPakhtunkhwa (-46.9 per cent) and Balochistan (-44.2 per cent) during Juneto November, 2018, said the third drought early warning alert issued byPMD.The third alert of PMD stated that the provinces of Sindh and Balochistanwere already facing moderate to severe droughts based on the satellite andobservation data analysis.According to official sources of Provincial Disaster Management Authority(PDMA) Balochistan, the maximum population affected was recorded as overall18,17,007 out of total 1,832,635 people affected, 270,258 severely affectedfamilies, goat and sheep affected were 3,128,472 along with other affectedgoods of 360,228 whereas relief items demanded by DC (families) 164,763 andPDMA dispatched 27,498 goods.The total affected districts with a chunk of population affected by droughtwere Quetta, Killa Abdullah, Pishin, Zhob, Loralai, Naushki, Washuk,Chagai, Kharan, Panjgur, Gwadar (calamity declared by DC Gwadar), Kech,Dera Bughti, Killa Saifullah, Sherrani, Barkhan, Kohlu, Jaffarabad,Naseerabad (Water, food, medicines and fodder demanded), Jhal Magsi,Kachhi, Awaran, Lasbella and Khuzdar.
The drought situation in Sindh also affected 8 districts of the provincewhere PDMA Sindh was monitoring the situation and distributed wheat bagsand ration among the affected people of the drought-hit district whereas nofurther information was available by the authority. However, the third PMDalert identified Badin, Dadu, Hyderabad, Jacobabad, Jamshoro, Karachi,Khairpur, Larkana, Mityari, Mohenjodaro, Padidan, Qambar Shadadkot,Rohri,Sajwal, Sanghar, Shaheed Benazirabad, Tharparkar, Thatta and Umerkot.
