Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has urged the international community to help Pakistan in rehabilitation and reconstruction for millions of flood-affected people, and play a judicious role to improve resilience and adaptability of the Pakistani nation.
The prime minister, in his message to the nation on the annual National Resilience Day being observed on Saturday to commemorate the October 8, 2005 earthquake, said once again, Pakistan had been worst hit by a climate-induced disaster in the form of floods. As a result, 1,696 precious lives were lost, 12,867 people sustained injuries and over 33 million people were affected.
The prime minister said October 8 was observed annually as the National Resilience Day in the country to express solidarity with the people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and rest of Pakistan, who suffered human and other losses due to the disasters. “The day is also a reminder that we live in a region marked as highly vulnerable to disasters. Pakistan is the 7th most disaster vulnerable country in the Climate Risk Index,” he remarked.
Over the years, he said, Pakistan had witnessed multiple natural disasters in the form of earthquakes, floods, GLOF events, cloud bursts, unprecedented rainfalls and severe heat waves, forest fires which caused loss of precious lives, not to mention loss of millions of dollars. He said the recent floods perished a million livestock, damaged four million acres of crops besides causing widespread damage to communication infrastructure.—APP
