News
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
UK to intensify relief efforts in PakistanISLAMABAD/LONDON: The UK will intensify efforts this week in the critically affected south Pakistan to help avert the risk of a public health crisis.
That would include providing urgently needed clean drinking water and sanitation for hundreds of thousands of people, British International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell announced in the Parliament on Tuesday. Outlining some of the aid programme, he said the UK government would start emergency production lines in factories in Lahore and Karachi, to produce 2,155 hygiene kits per day and 5,300 water containers per day for two weeks.
Speaking in the lower House of Commons Mitchell said, “The floods in Pakistan are extraordinary and demand an extraordinary response. That is why we are taking these inventive approaches to set up an emergency production line and scouring the globe to fly in such huge quantities of urgently needed items.
Separately on Tuesday, the first chartered flight carrying aid from the UK arrived at the Quaid-e-Azam International Airport, Karachi.
The aid on board the aircraft included 18,800 water containers for families to store clean water, 34 million water purification tablets making 340 million litres of safe drinking water and three water purification units, which is to be distributed by humanitarian NGOs to victims in the worst flood-affected areas of the country, including Sindh and Punjab. staff report/app
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk