SHIKARPUR, Pakistan: International aid agencies struggling to help hundreds of thousands of people displaced by deadly floods in Pakistan have asked for the easing of curbs on imports of food from Pakistan’s old rival India, a Pakistani minister said on Wednesday.
Unusually heavy monsoon rains have triggered floods that have submerged a third of the country and killed more than 1,100 people, including 380 children. The United Nations has appealed for US$160 million to help with what it termed as an “unprecedented climate catastrophe”.
Pakistan faces surging food prices, compounding the misery for the millions affected by the disaster.
Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said the government was considering loosening restrictions on the largely closed border with India to let in supplies of vegetables and other food.
“More than one international agency has approached the government to allow them to bring food items from India through the land border,” Ismail said on Twitter.
He said the government will decide whether to allow that based on supply conditions and after consulting its coalition partners and key stakeholders.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that hundreds of thousands acres of crops have been washed away.
“We have lost rice crop. Fruits and vegetables have been destroyed,” he told reporters after his trip to the flooded areas in the north.
General Akhtar Nawaz, chief of the national disaster agency, has said more than 809,371 hectares of agricultural land were flooded.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since they were carved out of British India in 1947 and their border is heavily fortified and largely sealed off.
Very little trade and travel takes place between Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India despite historic, cultural and family ties.