By Faisal Shakeel

The flooding in Pakistan this July has created a situation that still perplexes the government and the NGOs engaged in helping millions of displaced people. Eight weeks on, the emergency is far from over and people in Sindh still need to be airlifted to safe places where they can get food and shelter.

“The monsoon rains may be over, but the floods are not,” says Andro Shilakadze, head of the local office of Unicef. “And once the floods are over, we must stress that the most dangerous phase of this emergency is yet to come. We must all work together in a concerted manner to avert a health crisis, prevent further malnutrition, and combat the effects of food shortages.”

After initially criticising the NGOs for what the prime minister called their extravagant overheads, it seems now the government has realised the importance of working with them closely. The opposition’s rhetoric about imposing regulations on the working of the NGOs has died down as well.

The unfolding disaster and rapidly approaching winter present new challenges which call for sharing responsibilities and garnering as much help as possible. The fate of at least 10 million people, still without shelter after displacement, hangs the in balance, for they have neither tents nor warm clothes nor sufficient food and water.

Keeping these challenges in mind the UN revised its call for aid, estimating that it would need more than $2bn over the course of a year. So far contributions have been received for $615m – 31 percent of what is required – and pledges for a further $52.6m.

Many believe the uncertain political situation in the country is hampering the flow of aid, forcing aid organisations to revise their strategies and the government to abandon its commitments. In southern Punjab, the government backed out of an agreement to provide farmers with seed to cultivate their land after floods washed away their crops.

Stacey Winston, information officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha) believes the country’s political woes may not be responsible for the slow pace of aid: “It is the slow onset of disaster, which is totally different from the 2005 earthquake and tsunami. Disasters which unfold quickly and where the death toll is higher, like the one in Haiti, click with the media, which in turn helps generate funds and support through its coverage.”

She says that Unocha was coordinating with 156 national and international NGOs to help mitigate the suffering of the people, besides maintaining liaisons with the National Disaster Management Authority. The authority, formed after the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, provides logistics to the UN and helps avoid duplication of relief work.

A survey of relief work in far flung areas reveals that even if duplication is avoided, problems could still arrive when local NGOs and district administration join hands in relief activities. Hyat Fayyaz of the Participatory Social Network, a local NGO working in Layyah district in Punjab, says that even cooking and distributing food at the camps for the displaced became a problem when the district government appointed a local official to streamline the process.

Fayyaz also worries about the looting of relief goods by mobs and their siphoning off to political allies. “That’s where you need to have community networks on the pattern of what we have in Gilgit-Baltistan,” says Fazl Karim, a social worker associated with the Aga Khan Foundation.

Karim says they were able to resolve the problem of distribution on political grounds when the aid agencies coordinated with the Aga Khan Development Network, an umbrella organisation that oversees local support organisations at the union council level.

Karen Brown, an international trustee with ActionAid, says they could improve relief work by developing community networks and creating a board of trustees in Pakistan along the lines seen in India. She acknowledges that with wider networks of private organisations and local NGOs comes the need for ensuring transparency and accountability.

She says that the way to ensure transparency is to introduce downward accountability among local partners and empower them to have a say in decision-making. ActionAid is busy raising more funds for the flood hit people of Pakistan, especially with winter approaching.

But with the focus currently on relief, the task of rehabilitating 20.25 million people and rebuilding 1.9 million homes in an area larger than England could prove insurmountable.