Recently floods have devastated 19 districts of Sindh Province. "Village after village – washed away. Roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, homes – destroyed. Crops and livelihoods – wiped out” OCHA officials have said the disaster eclipsed the scale of the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti put together.
According to Sindh’s Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), Populations of 07 million people are affected in Sindh and some 7277 villages with population of 7,000,491 people (including women and children) are at the risk of being submerged. A total of 1,060,680 houses have been damaged/ destroyed. Many families have moved in with relatives in other districts. During the devastation 909 persons injured/disabled, 186 persons died and 2453503 acre crop affected with land of 6818209 acre.
Marking of the land for particular owner/farmer is vanished due to flooding.
In some cases whole settlement is flattened by the flood leaving no sign for defining the household plots and farming areas.
It is feared that most of the people lost their land/property documents and it may be an opportunity for the corrupt persons to exploit female headed households for manipulation when they will approach them for land/property ownership documents. In view of the above it seems necessary to build the capacity of the local grass root organizations and local community to cope with these issues.
The women especially female headed households are the vulnerable groups; they face violence and gender discriminations at the all level. It is important to know these groups about their rights and get necessary support from the government agencies as per priority.
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