LAHORE
Policymakers have wasted more than Rs60 billion to undertake studies at national level for minimising flood damages and proper utilisation of that water from 1978 to 2010 with zero results on ground, TheNation has learnt through a research.
Around Rs13 billion were spent on National Flood Protection Plan (Phase I and II) until 1998 and Rs12 billion were spent on the phase III of the same plan. The intelligent babus then announced preparing Master Feasibility Report of worth Rs25 billion aiming at utilisation of floodwater but no such plans showed up.
There was no master plan between years 2007 to 2009 but a five years plan with the name Flood Control and Management was made and till 2010 around Rs14 billions were spent on this plan – the year country witnessed super flood when more than one fifth of Pakistan’s total land was under water, leaving millions of people homeless and destruction of infrastructure at massive level.  The same year with the passage of 18th amendment, the provinces were given responsibility for making disaster management. However, with continuously witnessing heavy floods for past four years, it has been established that disaster risk control is also not on wish list of provincial government especially of Punjab and Sindh. Both the provinces took negligible steps to avoid or minimise losses from natural disaster through proper planning.
In 2010, the flood losses though had been calculated $10 billion but the agriculture experts said that the same years Pakistan wasted 55 million acre feet water of worth $110 billion.
According to estimates, the country faced around Rs250 billion losses in terms of agriculture economy in 2012 floods. The National Disaster Management Authority then informed the Senate Standing Committee that the floods devastated crops at 4.2 million acres only in Punjab and wrecked 512 villages in different districts besides affecting 4.5 million people in Punjab. The then PML-N-led Punjab government, however, learnt nothing from the lesson, made no planning but only announced establishing flood fighting plan on papers.
Hence, August 2013 appeared bringing more destruction and horrible scenes to poor Pakistanis, vanishing thousands of villages, making millions homeless and destructing crops at thousands of acres. No preparedness at ground was done by the provincial governments of Punjab and Sindh to minimise or avoid losses. Reports said that the flood of 2013 caused around $10 billion loss only to Punjab’s economy.  Nothing had been done by the rulers for disaster management and the unfortunate moments of current heavy floods arrived which so for made millions homeless in Punjab and it appeared that most of the damages to human, cattle and property are occurring due to lack of early planning.
  There is no surprise about the summer monsoon in Pakistan. The National Disaster Management Authority rings alarm about floods every year, but the government took no step to avoid losses from the disaster.
Various departments especially the Irrigation will eat up millions of rupees in the name of repair work at canal, rajbas and embankments.
The massive corruption will be done in the name of rehabilitation work and then monsoon of year 2015 will approach.