Four Million Pakistani Quake Victims In Dire Need Of Shelter

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 19 (Bernama) -- Help is steadily flowing in but sadly, not in the form of the crucial items badly needed by the victims of the Oct 8 earthquake in Pakistan, according to a Pakistan High Commission senior official here.

He said the urgent items needed were tents, blankets and medicines because the four million displaced Pakistanis were now sleeping under the open sky without shelter or blankets as 95 per cent of the buildings in the affected areas were gone.

"The number of casualties is expected to sky-rocket if the millions of displaced Pakistanis continue to live at the mercy of the extreme weather. The temperature in some parts of Kashmir will dip below -10 degrees Celsius and in extreme cases, as low as -30 degrees Celsius," he told Bernama Wednesday.

The official, who did not want to be named, said the bad news was that winter had started and would last until April.

"The most important thing that we need now is tents to provide people with shelter," he said, adding that the private sector from Malaysia had donated some 50 tents that could cater to 10 to 15 people each.

"We need hundreds or thousands of tents, if not millions, otherwise the number of casualties is set to increase further," he said.

Apart from tents, the country was also in dire need of critical medicines such as anti-tetanus globulin (ATG) injections, Ceftnaxone IG injections, Velosef capsules and injections, Pethidine and Tramal injections, Haemaccel Infusion and portable X-ray machine, he said.

He also called on Malaysia Airlines (MAS) and AirAsia to help provide mercy flights to transport the donated goods because time was an important factor and now they depended heavily on Pakistan International Airline (PIA) apart from the Malaysian government mercy flights to send the items to Pakistan.

He said some of the bulky relief items like the 8,500kg of formula milk donated by Dumex, 100,000 packets of noodles from Mamee and 1,000 metal beds would be shipped out from Port Klang to Karachi.

It is learnt that MasKargo is offering a 50 per cent discount on the fares to deliver the goods to Karachi but the amount was still very high, he said.

He said the High Commission was trying its best to get the goods delivered from Malaysia by next week.

-- BERNAMA

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