Balochistan Government declares emergency across the province
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ISLAMABAD - The Balochistan government has declared drought emergency in the entire province owing to the dry spell prevailing for the last 2 to 3 years whereas as around 24 districts were facing serious drought situation.
Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) had already issued three alerts of drought early warning on June 6, September 6 and December 1, 2018 to National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), PDMAs and other concerned departments. During the third alert below normal rainfall was recorded over the southern parts of the country as predicted by Met office. Rainfall deficit was experienced over the provinces of Sindh (-71.9 per cent), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (-46.9 per cent) and Balochistan (-44.2 per cent) during June to November, 2018, said the third drought early warning alert issued by PMD. The third alert of PMD stated that the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan were already facing moderate to severe droughts based on the satellite and observation data analysis. According to official sources of Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) Balochistan, the maximum population affected was recorded as overall 18,17,007 out of total 1,832,635 people affected, 270,258 severely affected families, goat and sheep affected were 3,128,472 along with other affected goods of 360,228 whereas relief items demanded by DC (families) 164,763 and PDMA dispatched 27,498 goods. The total affected districts with a chunk of population affected by drought were 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 province where PDMA Sindh was monitoring the situation and distributed wheat bags and ration among the affected people of the drought-hit district whereas no further information was available by the authority. However, the third PMD alert identified Badin, Dadu, Hyderabad, Jacobabad, Jamshoro, Karachi, Khairpur, Larkana, Mityari, Mohenjodaro, Padidan, Qambar Shadadkot,Rohri, Sajwal, Sanghar, Shaheed Benazirabad, Tharparkar, Thatta and Umerkot.
