Details regarding contributions, contacts

List of needed items:
Rice
Pulses ORS Packets
250ml milk packs
Dry dates
Sugar
Chanay
Dettol soaps
Cooking oil
Clothes(preferably in good shape)
Nutritious biscuits
Glucose
Eye drops

Right now, we are considering whether or not to include tents in our items' list. This depents upon the influx of donations since purchasing and erecting tents is a costlier project.However, this is certainly in the pipe-line.

Many people have contacted us and they wished to deliver the items after purchasing them, rather than sending cash. Those who wish to do so, here's a sincere advice: when you make purchase, at least consult us or someone who's actively involved in relief activity. Because if you purchase something from a normal shop, you're actually paying double the price of what you could've got it for through a little extra work.

As for cash donations, you can simply relay it to the following account:
Salman Latif
025510054100024 (MCB Shah Rukne Alam, Lari Adda Road Branch)
Branch Code: 1412
Please drop us a message after you send your donations.

Contact info:
Salman Latif
0322-6102109
salmanlatif2004@hotmail.com

Rana Tariq
0333-6160321

For submission of cash or items in person, you can contact the following persons:
Lahore:
Salman Javaid
0332-4125791

Multan:
Salman Latif
0322-6102109

Saqib
0323-6480868

Islamabad/Rawalpindi:
Ali Suleman
0345-5898691

Volunteer:
If you wish to join us on any trips in future, which, we assure you, will be frequent, please drop an email at either of the addresses given below.

If you have any queries, kindly send an email at:
letusrebuildpakistan@gmail.com
or
salmanlatif2004@hotmail.com

Lending a helping hand

At a relief camp at Mithan Kot

“We barely fled with our lives. 7-feet waves washed across the entire village when the Muzaffargarh Canal overflowed” narrates Muhammad Hanif of Basti Kandi Wala, a village at a few kilometers from Mehmood Kot. Standing near a crowd of displaced populace, Hanif tells that there is no chance for a normal life, not at least for a long time, “As long as waters recede completely, there’s no going back. And even when it does, we’ll have homes to build, marshy lands to deal with and above all, the rent that is to be paid to the landlords.” His village comprises of about 30-35 houses. The residents of nearly all of them are currently stationed at Qureshi wala, by the Kot Addu road.

The area had been cut off both ways for about a week when the road drowned under-water. At one side, Mehmood Kot and at the other, Kot Addu was inaccesible. Even now when we headed for the region, a 200-m strip was being over-flown with a strong current of water, though not deep, yet constantly cutting at the road and diminishing it’s size. “For a week, we were stranded, with no food or relief from the authorities or anyone.” Ghulam Asghar, aged 35 relates. “However CM Shahbaz Sharif made a visit yesterday and now tents are being pitched up for the affectees” he points to a cluster of tents nearby. According to the locals, a government person had been assigned by the CM to maintain NIC lists of the affectees and then allocate them tents accordingly.

Medical Relief Camp by Azm-e-Nau*:
After a week-long effort, Azm-e-Nau had been able to procure a fair amount of medicinal provisions(to the cost of 1 lakh), four doctors from Nishtar and a dispenser. Initially the plan was to pitch up a tent at an appropriate location and then stay there for the rest of the day. However, considering a lot of scattered clusters of tents and people, we decided to go mobile. Three stops at different localities, including Qureshi wala, were made and some 350 – 400 patients were diagnosed and treated with basic medicines. Some cases required immediate infusions due to severe dehydration. Many eye infections were also reported, probably an outcome of using contaminated water for washing purposes. Throughout the check-up, a log of the diagnosis was continously maintained. This, we did to keep track of the more prevalent diseases and make our arrangements accordingly for future excavations.

Following are the results:
The most prevalent problem was skin allergy which was involved in some 40% of the cases. Skin infections, infected wounds, rashes and boils, all were not only frequent but had grown worse because of the lack of clean water. Many who’d been wandering in flood waters, either to fetch goods from inundated homes or to some other purpose, had their affected skin in very bad state. Boils were common among children and a majority of elderly patients reported fatigue and weakness.

Here is a more detailed statistical analysis of our log record:

Malaria: 40% patients had acquired it, especially in areas where water had somewhat receded and left behind swarms of mosquitoes thriving upon low-level inundations. Majority of the cases were found among children and those in early teens ranging from ages 1-15 years.

Gastro: 60% patients reported being suffering from gastro. The distribution was more pronounced in the age brackets 1-15 years and 15-30 years.

Eye infections: Although there weren’t many eye cases, the ones we came across were most notably affecting children with 40% of the diagnosed children suffering from it.

Diarrhoea: Diarrhoea was more or less common in nearly all age groups. 30% patients suffered from it and some of the cases were pretty severe. We thus infused them immediately with drips.

Lack of clean water, stifling climate and profuse sweating all contributed to many cases of dehydration. Some of them had to be treated with infusions. For others, ORS suspension solutions came in very handy. Doctors highly recommend it to tackle dehydration and it’s a cost-effective solution. There were obvious cases of malnutrition too, with children and elderly in 50+ age bracket among the major sufferers. Upon a friendly inquiry with the locals, it was revealed that food disbursal was often a tug-of-war where the strong, especially young males, were able to scoop majority food items and the weak and elderly faced inadequacy.

Future expeditions:
All in all, the trip was fruitful in that we were able to expend whatever resources we had brought together for the intended purpose. It also gave us a first-hand experience of people’s plight and the needed medicine. We realized we need to add eye drops and skin ointments to our supplies.
Once back, we are planning for another expedition. News have been pouring in of Jampur’s inundations and road link to Rajan Pur being inaccessible which means both areas are recieving minimum food and medicinal supplies. We thus intend to make journey there within a week or so, since it’s the most remote areas which need most help.

Meanwhile, here’s a sincere piece of advice for those who are arranging medical relief trips: Since you’re buying medicine in huge stocks, buy them off a phamaceutical company directly and NEVER from a normal medical store. You’d be astounded at the remarkable discounts you get, mostly in the range of 30-40%. Also, local pharmaceuticals are the best choice if you want maximum medicine in lesser resources. One may question their efficacy but according to many doctors who’s advice I sought before opting for them, there is a very small difference in efficacy. And that a well-reputed pharmaceutical does indeed make the best choice to buy off medicine. So use your resources effectively and make the best choice!

*Azm-e-Nau is a student, non-profit organization working solely for social welfare and to promote youth’s social and national role.

- Salman Latif

Muzaffargarh expedition – contributing our two pennies

Ever since the flood disaster hit, I’d been thinking of doing some practical work on relief and thus far, my activities had been confined to helping the flood victims stationed in a nearby school. I also had some money piled up from friends and family and intended to embark upon a trip to afflicted regions. But things had been postponing over and over due to my house-hold engagements.

Today, though, as I recieved an sms from a friend inviting me to a trip to Muzaffargarh to disburse relief good, I promptly replied in affirmative(A huge part in this readiness was played by the inspiring narrations from others). By 11 a.m. I was heading straight for Ghanta Ghar where a number of PCYF(Pakistan Children and Youth Foundation, a local non-profit organization) members awaited departure. After brief introductions, we embarked upon the journey. To cite the load, we had some 100 packets, each containing daal, tea, milk, sugar, biscuits, medicine and other basic items. The total funds, I was told, had been 50,000, collected in two days and that this was a trip to gain a first-hand insight into the needs of the affectees and then plan a subsequent trip accordingly.

We soon crossed the Chenab bridge, where water was contained by dikes and embankments. As soon as we were across, there were tents pitched up along the road and people eagerly waiting and running after every load-carrying vehicle in hope for food and other material. And there were innumerable of them. I really wished to take a stop there but in better wisdom, Khwaja Mazhar Nawaz, leading the expedition told the party to drive further on, since the tail-end victims recieved the least of relief goods and were the most needy. Hence we kept our trail and in some time, we were near Mehmood Kot, some 40 kms from Jacobabad. Here we witnessed a first-hand state of affairs. The road, half-a-mile down our trail, was swallowed by water and this was the last possible stop. As soon as we applied brakes, all hell broke loose and people truly ‘attacked’ us from all directions. On the truck, we were a group of some six youngsters and while relentlessly thwarting the assaulters, we kept asking them to line-up so that we may hand away the relief goods in a more organized fashion. That was to no use of course. I must say it was the first time I witnessed hunger bare and naked, gnawing it’s teeth at us. Everyone wanted to get a crumb, no matter how small. And they fought for it. We had to resort to throw things up in the air and away from the truck to keep it from rolling over, a threat which seemed pertinent as a large mass clung to it. The packets were gone in no time and we could still see people, especially the old and the women, standing aside from the crowd, having not received anything since they couldn’t force their way through. I wished we had another truck-load of goods.

As we readied to head back, I kept asking myself whether this was the right way of disbursing goods, so randomly and without ensuring that it reaches everyone equally. However, a friend’s response answered the question well. ‘It has to be this way. In such a crisis situation and amid such a mass of deprived populace, we had to do this. Even when it doesn’t help in the best manner, it helps at least in imparting food and necessities to some.’ I know there was no best alternative and that this way the only way of doing things. On our way back, we saw other vehicles ran over and attacked by the populace the moment the drivers halted and decided to start the distribution. Some resorted to other measures such as throwing stuff while driving steadily. That, however, struck me as a rather worse choice. Even when we’d been manhandled, beaten, pushed and pulped in the entire process, it was a least humiliating way for the victims. Throwing things out of a vehicle while driving on and watching people leap at it is a rather inhumane way to help them.

What struck me most was the utter lack of any governmental authority, any official relif work or any other sort of aid that could have come from more organized quarters in this region. Even army’s relief role in the region was confined to a tiny camp near Muzaffargarh power station where it comprised a very bare fraction of the entire mass. Having read so much about relief camps and activities, it was rather shocking for me that this region seemed utterly neglected. Thanksfully, though, people had access to clean water. Tents, too, were few and far between with thousands sitting literally by the roads, helpless and hopefully eyeing every other vehicle that drove along. Fuel, we learnt, was precious and petrol was sold at a hellish price of some 130/litre, scarce and barely available. We did see many helping hands along the way, distributing packets of milk and other food items. But an organized relief work was absent all along.

We came back, happy with the tiny morsel that we had contributed in helping the victims and laden with grief over the actual work that needed to be done. It also affirmed our ambition to further our relief efforts, with plans for similar embarks in the coming days. On the drive back, heavy rain lashed down and we witnessed people rushing impotently in growing down-pours. Also, to think that the damage that was to be is done would be a mistake. Chenab river still threats the areas nearing Muzzafargarh and the main city itself with it’s widening breadth. And the rains only add to the misery and danger. Without appropriately cautioned by the government, affectees are camped in region which are prone to a possible flood-tide and things may worsen if a fore-warning is not issued to make them aware of the threat.

Also, although helping the relief victims brought into urban relief camps is more organized and convenient. But those that are still in the flood-ravaged regions or nearby are the ones in severest need of relief goods. Many of them are carrying farm animals with them and hence, take to camping rather than traveling to safer places. Those who choose to leave are forced to sell their animals at a fraction of their original price. “We were forced to sell our animals worth 10,000 at meagre prices of 2,500 per head” says our guide Ramzan, a resident of Kot Addu and currently stationed near Muzaffargarh with his family. Only this money enables them to travel with whatever is left of their belongings.

Most of the suffering populace is the lower class, earning their bread through day-to-day work. And now that their fields are swamped, houses are demolished and goods afloat in ruthless waters, they have absolutely no way to earn an income enough to buy them basic food and necessities. The work that needs to be done is doubtlessly huge and for now, the chief concern is to sustain these victims, through food, medicinal facilities, clothes and other items of daily use. Reconstruction can initiate only once the waters recede, which there seem no signs of as of yet. Till then, it rests upon us, the more fortunate of this country’s residents, to help these people in these trying times, both for the sake of their being humans and for the sake of their being our fellow countrymen.

P.S. Any readers from Multan or lower Punjab can contact me if they wish to participate in relief work. We have further trips planned to deliver the relief goods in the afflicted regions and volunteers may also join in.

- Salman Latif

Flood disaster and a mute blogosphere

In the not-so-far past, Pakistan has faced two major crisis situations where relief and rescue were the chief problems. The two instances were the 2008 Earthquake and the IDPs issue during the Swat operation. To be crudely honest, both occurrences were manifest of the fact that Pakistan is very poorly equipped to tackle any disaster situation, human or natural. Lack of food or medical supplies, delayed rescue, corruption in foreign aid and similar other things through these happenings clearly depicted that there is no solid policy neither governmental organization that is ready-at-go whenever the need arises for emergency deliverance from a calamity. One hoped, despite all pessimism, that perhaps an initiative will be taken after the two cases towards establishing such an agency as would be more effective in minimizing the post-effects of such tragedies. Nevertheless, the current catastrophe that has yet again killed thousands and displaced millions is a proof enough to ascertain that nothing of the sort was among the priorities.

As I write these lines, the latest reports put the death toll from floods at some 1,100 with 1.5 million affectees and some 100,000 plagued by diseases like cholera. Most of those affected are stranded at remote areas, away from safety, with no food or shelter or clean water and with no access to medical facilities. The waters are still raging on and more villages are vulnerable to disaster, risking yet many more thousands of lives. The only organization that is effectively doing the rescue work is the Army, thanks to its technical advancement and immediate personnel deployment. Apart from it, there barely is an organized, effective and large-scale contribution from any other quarter.

However, my intent in this article is not to criticize the government. I’ll come to that later, for the televangelists are already vociferating loud exclamations about government’s utter failure manifest in the Air Blue Crash. It’s the response media and Pakistani blogosphere generally made to the flood disaster that I seek to write about.

Flood has been raging and razing to ground properties and villages since many days now. And there’s not end to it, at least not yet as Sindh stays at a high alert and many areas of Punjab have been evacuated due to excessive inundations. This simple means that the hell that has broken loose and it’s post-effects are far from over and need serious consideration in the media circles. However, what has appalled me is an utterly careless, stolid response of the Pakistan media in general and the blogosphere in particular towards this issue. While there have been posts after posts on the issue of Air Blue place crash, which I fully endorse, there has been a sort of mute dumbness on the flood disaster. I’ve been desperately running from blog to blog but I have barely seen a post about it on any of the major blogs of Pakistan. Not only that, the casual bloggers too seem not to give a damn about it and if at all, have given it a passive sympathy in one-liners of short briefers.

Is it a co-incidence? Are the forums so overwhelmed with plane crash posts for now that the flood-posts would be in the coming soon? Well, I don’t think so. And the reason being that our blogosphere, which we proudly cite as the chief tool of citizen journalism and free discourse, seems to be dragging along the same lines as the conventional media – those of sensational journalism. Whereas plane crash immediately hit the hype and became the hot-dog in media circles, the millions of affectees are not worth a post! Don’t we see a stark difference in our attitudes towards the two happenings?

Why is this so? Why the disparity? To me, the only thing that comes off as a sound reason is that the plane crash was a federal incident. It happened right in Islamabad, involved learned, educated and some elite personnel and was immediately accessible by more or less every media outlet. The inundated lands, on the other hand, are remote, largely inaccessible right now, and simply, a boring thing to report. Who’d prefer watching lives lost in a water over-flow to those lost in a plane crash anyway? In this land of pure, the weight age of human lives certainly seems to differ from area to area and class to class.

Another thing that struck me while trying to decipher this conundrum is that since Pakistan’s online populace is mostly based in either Karachi or Punjab’s developed regions, maybe the huge loss of lives is too unconcerned and detached an issue to report and make some noise about. Why bother when our immediate circles or areas are unaffected.

I admit this may be bit too crude for some of us and may be too gross a conclusion but after hungrily searching blogs for information and opinion over flood and flood relief efforts, this is the only valid argument I can arouse. I must note here that there have been certain blogs making very laudable initiatives such as organizing relief camps and enlisting relief agencies (Secular Pakistan, LUBP etc). But the online Pakistani populace, at large, is silent at the flood saga. And that, I must say, is a big disappointment to me.

I think it’s time that we revise and think over the basis upon which we wish to construct our blog ethics. Before this facet of blog-activism also relapses into the conventional waters of traditional media, we ought to pause for a moment and think is it really the direction we’d been aspiring for? I guess each of us will have his/her answer.

- Salman Latif