Early Recovery Interventions in flood affected areas of Sindh by AKPBS,P

Text: Mishaal Rozina Merchant

 Visuals: Courtesy AKPBS,P

Living in the flood plains of river Indus on the southern side, are many small clusters of settlements of fishermen and agrarian communities. The monsoons bringing water downstream the river are sometimes a source of joy and misery at others. When bringing fresh water fish and alluvial soils it provides people with sustenance and when striking with its full fury it sweeps away their homes. Such was a disaster in August 2010; over 17 million people were directly affected by the floods having to go through the trauma of leaving their homes, land and belongings behind and relocating to unknown places for indeterminate time periods. Thatta being the confluence of River Indus and the Arabian sea, is prone to double disaster from the flooding of the river and the sea level rise.

“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.”

Richard Buckminister Fuller

Aga Khan Planning and Building Service, Pakistan (AKPBS,P) – an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) - partnered with The Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (organizational unit within USAID)  to take  on the challenge of post disaster reconstruction in rural Sindh.  With the unique methodology of using locally available materials to endure the local weather conditions, research, documentation, rigorous monitoring and evaluation, and encouraging continuous feedback from the local communities led to design enhancement as a continuous evolutionary process. This approach made the 2,800 shelters more durable and responsive to the traditional housing needs of the communities, and changed the lives of almost 14,000 Internally Displaced Persons in 120 villages. These communities now have access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities through the 148 toilet blocks and 234 hand pumps installed in the region.

Deprived of toilet facilities and rain proof shelters, for many, the intervention was a life changing enhancement - clean drinking water, proper toilets with privacy and soak pits are a luxury for many in this region. For the first time, these women in Sindh have access to private toilets giving them privacy and dignity.