PWRDF releases $15K for Pakistan flood victims

The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) has released an initial grant of $15,000 for relief efforts in Pakistan, which was hit by a devastating flood late July that killed more than 1,500 people and displaced nearly three million others.

The grant was released through Action by Churches Together (ACT), a coalition of church-based groups that responds to natural disasters and humanitarian crises. PWRDF is a member of ACT International.

Church agencies are struggling to help victims of the flooding, which the Red Cross said was the worst to hit the country in 80 years.

“We are faced with a challenging situation as hundreds of bridges and roads have been washed out," Mervin Parvez, the Church World Service (CWS) country director for Pakistan-Afghanistan, told Ecumenical News International (ENI) from Islamabad in a telephone interview.

Many of the estimated 3.5 million residents of the worst-hit Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province lost their homes and their crops. Other areas badly hit include Balochistan and Punjab—among the poorest in the country, according to the United Nations News Centre.

Many roads have been impassable due to flooding and landslides, ENI said, quoting a report from ACT. An assessment team from CWS, which is an ACT member, was stranded in Khoistan, 150 kms from Islamabad,  it added.