ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday called for urgent construction of reservoirs and dams as swollen rivers devastated the breadbasket province of Punjab, where at least 17 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands evacuated this week.
The flooding, fueled by record monsoon rains and excess water released from upstream India, has created crisis conditions in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and richest province and home to half the population of 240 million. Authorities have issued evacuation orders around the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers, where record flows have been recorded at barrage points.
The Punjab government called in the army this week to support rescue and relief operations, with over 1.1 million people evacuated from vulnerable areas, while more than 1,600 villages and small settlements were submerged. The NDMA has also warned the southern Sindh province to prepare for rising Indus flows in the coming days.
Since June 26, torrential monsoon rains linked to climate change have killed over 820 people and injured thousands across Pakistan, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).
“Most importantly, we have to build the capacity for water storage. If there is storage, there will be a shortage of flash floods. Cascading will also be controlled,” Sharif said in televised comments on Thursday.
“Whether it is the Basha Dam, the Momin Dam, or smaller dams in Punjab and the north, this is the work that we must start today.”
Sharif was speaking in the flood-affected Narowal district, where hundreds were stranded and rescued a day earlier after the Ravi River burst its banks, inundating farmland, houses and the Kartarpur shrine, one of Sikhism’s holiest sites.
Officials also warned on Thursday that the eastern towns of Chiniot and Hafizabad could face devastating floods if the Chenab River’s Qadirabad barrage, already handling flows well beyond capacity, were to fail. More than 900,000 cusecs have been recorded at the structure, forcing authorities to breach riverbanks to ease pressure. A cusec is a flow of volume equivalent to one cubic foot, or 28 cubic liters, every second.
The prime minister said Pakistan’s vulnerability to natural disasters was no longer in doubt:
“Pakistan is one of the top ten countries in the world [most impacted by climate change]… We should make it absolutely clear in our minds that in the coming years, this is something that will be repeated.”
NDMA Chairman Lt. Gen. Inam Haider Malik, briefing alongside the premier, said the current floods represented an unprecedented monsoon pattern:
“This is the first time that the system coming from the Bay of Bengal, the system developing from the West, and the system developing from the Arabian Sea have had a collective effect,” he said.
“The Sutlej, Chenab and Ravi rivers are under stress… in Marala, flows reached 900,000 cusecs, while Qadirabad and Khanki continue to face flows of nearly one million cusecs.”
Malik said the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers were carrying exceptionally high flows that would converge at Panjnad — the confluence of five rivers in southern Punjab — within two to three days before coursing downstream into Sindh.
He added that crops and infrastructure had been damaged in Punjab and warned that indicators suggested next year’s monsoon intensity “will be more than 22 percent higher.”
Punjab officials have confirmed at least 17 deaths this week, including five members of one family in Sialkot, while flights were suspended at Sialkot International Airport after record rainfall.
“At present, a flow of 200,000 cusecs of water is passing [through Pakistan’s rivers],” DG PDMA Irfan Ali Kathia said in a statement. “For the first time in 39 years, a flow of 200,000 cusecs is passing.”
Authorities fear the crisis will worsen as floodwaters move south into Sindh province, whose chief minister has assigned ministers to monitor flood threats in Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri, while lawmakers from riverine constituencies have been directed to stay in their districts.
Pakistan’s Meteorological Department has forecast fresh monsoon rains from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 across the country’s upper and central regions, with warnings of flash floods in Azad Kashmir, Murree, Galliyat, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northeastern Punjab.
Officials said the current monsoon spell could last until at least Sept. 10 and may rival the 2022 floods, Pakistan’s worst on record, which killed more than 1,700 people and caused over $30 billion in economic damage.
