Post-flood reconstruction, rehabilitation in Pak to cost 6.7 billion dollars

Islamabad, Nov 15(ANI): The World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have estimated that the post-flood reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in Pakistan would cost 6.7 billion dollars.

The international financial institutions said this in a report on Disaster Assessment Needs presented during the Pakistan Development Forum (PDF) in Islamabad.

According to the report, an amount of 1.4 billion dollars will be required only for reconstruction of houses destroyed by unprecedented floods in Pakistan.

The rebuilding of damaged communication and transport network has been estimated to cost 2.3 billion dollars, irrigation 420 million dollars and agriculture 250 million dollars, the News reports.

The estimation for education has been put at 500 million dollars and for employment 680 million dollars.

The report also estimated that rehabilitation of health related facilities will require 40 million dollars while making clean drinking water available and sanitation will cost 70 million dollars.

The "worst floods in Pakistan's history", triggered by torrential monsoon downpours in July, had claimed the lives of over 1,900 people and disrupted the lives of over 21 million people, eight percent of the population.

The floods first struck the western province of Baluchistan on July 22 before inundating the worst-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and then entering Punjab and Sindh.

It is estimated that over two million homes were damaged or destroyed.

The institutions had initially estimated that the floods inflicted 9.5 billion dollars losses to Pakistan's economy. (ANI)