Pakistanis still waiting for help after floods

On a small escarpment that rises above the Swat River near the northwestern town of Charsadda, sits one of the most desolate post-flood encampments in Pakistan.

Two months after raging torrents devastated the nearby village of Chek Hisara, 500 local families live in makeshift, plastic-shrouded lean-to’s. They are still waiting for outside assitance. It’s like Waiting for Godot.

The people of Chek Hisara are hungry and many are sick. But there’s no food and there are no doctors. They are deeply disspirited and they are distrustful of their government, whose officials, they claim, have failed to pay them a single assessment visit. Some of them have obtained UN tents, but local men – who gave me a tour of the camp – insist the UN hasn’t actually been there and neither, they say, have any international relief groups.

Khoshnuma Qadar, an elderly lady who runs the Muslim Women’s Welfare Society which has set up 50 girls schools in the area, and who visits the Chek Hisara camp regularly, says its people have been failed and ignored. She is baffled as to where all the hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of flood aid pledged by foreign donors has gone.

“The problem is the international community doesn’t trust the Pakistan government and the Pakistan government doesn’t trust international charities, so that’s why these people are suffering,” she says. “They need to co-operate with eachother. There is too much talking going on. No one is actually helping.”

In pictures: Pakistan flood victims
View Jonathan Miller's pictures from his visit to flood-hit Pakistan.

Channel 4 News visited the same camp seven weeks ago. At that time, the local people were indignant that they had had no relief aid. One man, Akhtar Munir, told me then: “We have no shelter. Children are suffering from diseases. There are not enough medicines. The government has not done anything.”

Even at that stage, we were being met by bitter accusations that government authorities had failed to come to the rescue. Islamist charities have continued to fill the vacuum left by the government. Wherever we have gone in Pakistan’s northwest, these groups have been providing food aid to the displaced. They have handed out cash too, and are now building new houses for the homeless, before winter sets in.

The Islamist charities include Falah-e-Insaniat, whose members we filmed with last month in both Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Falah is linked to the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa group and shares the same leader as the militant organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba, widely accused of orchestrating the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

Many international charities are running relief camps and providing medical assistance to displaced people. But travelling around Pakistan, Channel 4 News has continued to find groups of flood victims who have fallen between the cracks and have not received any aid.

In Sukkur, in the southern province of Sindh, we discovered a group of people living by the roadside who had walked 70 miles from their flooded village, but who had been living for weeks without shelter and little food. Many of the children were sick. Accute malnutrition is common, particularly among infants and there are fears of a looming malarial epidemic.

The needs in flood-affected areas of Pakistan are breath-taking. Fresh regions are still being flooded and aid agencies and the government are overwhelmed. Although huge sums of money have been pledged by the international community, and although much aid is reaching those in need, there are still many thousands of people who remain unreached and are in desperate need of assistance.

Pakistan's malnourished children
When confronted by the sight of a child so sick that it looks like it could die – and when you know that it’s in your power to do something – well, it’s pretty obvious what must be done, writes Jonathan Miller from Pakistan.

Fazal’s mother Sajan told me she couldn't take him to the doctor because she had no money. Again and again we’ve met people – the poorest of the poor – who had no idea that they can get free medical treatment at this time of crisis.

In the southern city of Sukkur, where we found baby Fazal, the charity Medicins Sans Frontieres was running an Intensive Child Feeding Centre in one local hospital. We informed Sajan that if she took her 18-month-old son Fazal there, they would be able to treat him at no cost to her.

Fazal was listless and severe malnutrition had discoloured his hair. It had also dramatically stunted his growth. His mother said his condition had recently worsened and that he was in more and more pain.

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