Canada announces $5 million aid for flood affectees of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Canada has announced $5 million in aid in an effort to help ‘scale up’ the humanitarian response to flooding in Pakistan, ARY News reported on Tuesday.

In a statement, the Canadian government said the country will provide emergency assistance including food and cash assistance for the most severely affected people, adding that the funding will support the work of trusted and experienced partners on the ground.

During a meeting with the office bearers of local Pakistani Canadian organizations in Ottawa, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Canada Zaheer Janjua thanked the Canadian government for its support.

The envoy said the expatriate Pakistanis should also come forward for the help of flood affectees. He pointed out that the floods have caused severe damage to public buildings and infrastructure.

A day earlier, it was reported that tens of millions of people across swathes of Pakistan were battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed, and the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.

Officials say 1,061 people have died since June when the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges.