ISLAMABAD (AP) — Almost three million children in Pakistan may miss at least one semester because of flood damage to schools, officials said yesterday, following heavy monsoon rains likely worsened by climate change.
Unprecedented deluges since mid-June have affected more than 33 million people, inundated millions of acres of land and devastated infrastructure, including education facilities.
Local authorities have set up temporary learning centres in flood-hit areas to enable children to keep studying. However, officials said these measures are not enough, given the scale of destruction.
In southern Sindh province, Pakistan’s worst-hit area, flooding has damaged about 15,000 schools, where 2.4 million children were enrolled, according to the local education department.
It has raised fears that at least 2.8 million children across the country may miss a semester, officials at the Planning Commission and National Disaster Management Authority told The Associated Press. Pakistan, UNICEF and other agencies have set up scores of temporary learning centers, they said.
Yesterday, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told journalists at the military-backed National Flood Response and Coordination Center that the deluges have caused so much destruction that relief and rehabilitation work will continue for two years.
The floods have killed 1,666 people, and damaged 643 schools in Baluchistan, 109 in Punjab and 287 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. The majority of those killed or affected by the disaster are women and children, according to data released on Wednesday by the National Disaster Management Authority.
A World Bank report released on Wednesday said the flooding had heavily impacted schools. The Government High School Ahmadani, in Punjab’s Dera Ghazi Khan district, had served generations of students since 1916. But it was no longer functional because of flood damage, it said.
