UN team assessing drought impact
The News, By GN Mughul
11/21/2002

HYDERABAD: A joint team of experts of three international organisations, namely the UNDP, FAO and WFP is currently on a one month's mission of assessing impact of the four-year drought on crop and food supply in Sindh and Balochistan, it is reliably learnt.

The team is scheduled to submit its final report to the WFP and FAO in Islamabad by November 30. The joint mission comprises two FAO national consultants, an agronomist, a livestock specialist, a consultant with expertise in assessment of drought and impact on household economy. The joint mission, in the first phase, toured Balochistan from November 1 till November 12.

During their stay in Balochistan, the members of the joint mission held meetings with the concerned senior officials of the Balochistan government and also visited the drought-affected areas. The mission is currently touring Sindh. On November 14, the mission held meetings with Sindh relief commissioner, additional chief secretary, Planning and Development, and secretaries for agriculture, livestock and forests and irrigation departments.

Since November 15, the members of the mission are inspecting the drought-hit areas of Sindh. On Friday, the team members are again scheduled to hold meetings with the heads of concerned provincial departments to discuss their findings with them.

On November 23, the team would fly back to Islamabad where it would give a presentation about its findings and recommendations to the UNDMT on November 29, while submit its final report to the WFP and FAO on November 30th.

The specific objectives of the mission are: to identify the areas severely affected by the drought; to assess the impact of drought on households and communities with special attention to: (i) which population groups are most affected?, (ii) identify local cropping mechanism, and (iii) to what extent will households mechanism meet food needs without loss of productive assets, (c) to determine the response capabilities of the government, district governments and NGOs and resources available, particularly with the aspect to determine that, (i) what is local organisational capacity, what are existing logistical resources, what are ongoing project programmes and what are the constraints (d) to estimate food needs of the affected population ie what would be estimated amount of food, and what could be period of assistance. It will also prepare an operational strategy.

Currently, the members of the joint mission are inspecting the drought-affected areas of five districts of Sindh viz Tharparkar, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Dadu and Thatta. These have been declared as drought-hit districts of the province by the provincial government.

Vast segments of the society in Sindh believe that this time around drought in Sindh has two causes ie lack of rains and severe shortage of water in Indus for Sindh.

The News has learnt that the case being prepared by the Sindh government about the impact of drought include not only the damages caused to the agriculture, livestock, etc due to lack of rains but also due to severe shortage of water supply in Indus during the last three to four years.

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