Hindu community in Pakistan open temple door for flood victims

INTERNATIONAL DESK: As Pakistan is facing its worst devastation due to the floods, the Hindu community in Balochistan has come up with a gesture of humanity and religious harmony, by opening the doors of a temple to shelter flood-affected people.

The flash floods have badly impacted 80 districts of Pakistan and the death toll from floods in the country has reached nearly 1,200.

A tiny village of Jalal Khan in the Kachhi district of Balochistan has been cut off from the rest of the province due to the floods. The floods in the country have destroyed houses and left mass destruction in their wake, Dawn newspaper reported.

Locals have opened the doors of the Baba Madhudas Mandir, as per the publication.

Recently, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) also raised concerns for providing healthcare facilities to almost 6,50,000 pregnant women in flood-affected areas in Pakistan.

“Almost 6,50,000 pregnant women in the flood-affected areas require maternal health services to ensure a safe pregnancy and childbirth,” UNFPA said in an official statement.

“Up to 73,000 women expected to deliver next month will need skilled birth attendants, newborn care, and support,” the UN agency added, reported ARY News.

On a two-day visit to Pakistan, the UN Secretary-General landed on Friday to express solidarity with the country’s people drenched by extreme monsoon rains that have led to the country’s worst flooding in a decade.

Record monsoons and heavy floods in Pakistan have given rise to hunger and various illnesses which have affected 33 million people. The experts believe that the situation would aggravate in the coming days as the flood affectees are forced to live under the sky depriving the required resources.

Huge areas of the country are still underwater and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes.

In the wake of severe floods, the initially estimated losses have accumulated in the range of USD 18 billion, Pakistan’s agriculture sector faces the worst blow as the agriculture growth might remain zero or slide into negative against the envisaged target of 3.9 per cent for the current financial year 2022-23.

The catastrophic floods displaced more than 33 million people and are estimated to have caused USD 30 billion of damage. (ANI)