KARACHI: Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent country’s biggest lake from bursting its banks and inundating nearby towns after unprecedented flooding, while disaster management agency raised its toll of flood deaths by another 24.

Record monsoons and melting glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountains have brought floods that have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,314, including 458 children, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Agency said. Floods have followed record-breaking summer temperatures and government and United Nations have both blamed climate change for extreme weather and devastation it has brought.

Authorities breached Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake, displacing up to 100,000 people from their homes in hope of draining enough water to stop lake bursting its banks and swamping more densely populated areas. But water levels in lake, to west of Indus River in southern province of Sindh, remain dangerously high. “Water level at Manchar Lake has not come down,” Jam Khan Shoro, provincial minister for irrigation told Reuters. He declined to say if another attempt to drain water from lake would be made. Floods are a huge burden for an economy already needing help from International Monetary Fund.

Published in The Daily National Courier, September, 06 2022

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