KASUR, Pakistan: The administration of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province will use satellite imagery to assess crop losses from this week’s devastating floods and compensate farmers, a provincial minister said on Saturday, as raging rivers submerged farmland and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
The flooding began on Monday after India released water into the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers following several heavy monsoon spells, swelling their flows and inundating vast tracts of land. As the rivers surged into Pakistan, they destroyed rice fields and fodder crops, swept away herds and submerged entire settlements, uprooting farming families and leaving them without food or income.
In Punjab’s Kasur district, which borders India, more than 45,000 people were evacuated on Friday night alone after powerful floodwaters broke an embankment on the Indian side of the Sutlej.
On Saturday, flocks of people were still seen moving out of their villages near Ganda Singh Headworks with livestock, many struggling in heavy rain.
“We have information on the [damaged] crops through satellite,” Punjab Health Minister Khawaja Salman Rafique told Arab News while visiting the area.
“The satellite will tell us that water entered one field and not another,” he continued. “So, on the basis of facts, data and analysis, [people will be] compensated.”
Rafique’s statement came at a time when thousands of farmers in the province had expressed despair amid impending financial pressures after losing much of their crops this year.
He said water levels in the Sutlej, Ravi and Chenab had begun to ease but large-scale rehabilitation would only begin once the rivers receded.
People, mostly women and children, continued to leave their houses, many of them saying they fear more floodwater could flow from India.
“I have come to take my children to safety but we have left three men behind to take care of animal,” Ismail Ahmad, an uprooted villager, told Arab News.
District Emergency Officer Dr. Nayyar Alam said 81 rescue teams were operating in the area and had helped evacuate residents and save more than 4,500 animals.
“Many people did not want to leave their homes and animals [even after floods], but last night the rising water level forced them to make calls for help,” he said.
Deputy Commissioner Kasur Imran Ali said around 127 villages had been hit by floodwaters in the district.
He said out of more than 45,000 people evacuated Friday night, only about 500 opted to go to government relief camps set up in schools.
“Most of the people want to stay with their relatives for a few days until the flood is over,” he said.
Meanwhile, at a camp in District Public School, some evacuees had already developed scabies and diarrhea, underscoring fears of water-borne diseases.
Authorities said medical camps were established in advance and medicine stocks had been dispatched to vulnerable areas.
Rice fields in Kasur were seen submerged in up to 13 feet of water, in what officials described as the worst flooding in nearly four decades.
