Update

PAKISTAN - Sindh Shelter Needs Overwhelming as Floods Roll South - As Pakistan's flood waters continue to engulf towns and villages bordering the Indus river in southern Sindh, the need for emergency shelter for the victims is continuing to grow.

"Shelter cluster agencies and the government are working round the clock to bring in tents, plastic sheets, blankets and other relief items. But we estimate that over five million people are still in desperate need of shelter and we do not yet have the sufficient capacity or resources to provide it", says IOM Regional Representative for West and Central Asia, Hassan Abdel Moneim Mostafa.

One month after the onset of the disaster, IOM's initial appeal to donors for $38 million over three months, which will be revised upwards next week, is currently 55%-funded with confirmed pledges of $21 million. Donors include the USA, the UK, Canada, Sweden and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

According to the government's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) the number of houses destroyed or damaged by the floods is now approaching 1.25 million. The floods have submerged some 3.2 million hectares or 14% of the country's cultivated land and left thousands of farming families destitute and homeless.

IOM and other relief organizations working in southern Sindh are struggling to deliver shelter and other aid to communities cut off by flood waters and damaged roads and bridges.

In Thatta district, IOM today completed a distribution of 6,000 plastic sheets, 1,800 blankets and 1,200 jerry cans to provide basic aid to 3000 families. This follows a delivery of 500 shelter kits (1,000 plastic sheets) to the district last week.

An estimated 1,300 km2 of land was inundated in Thatta last week, following a breach in the Surjani dyke. Some 400,000 people are now camped out on higher ground on the outskirts of Makli, near Thatta city and along the 138-kilometer Karachi-Hyderabad highway.

To date IOM and partner Emergency Shelter Cluster agencies including Save the Children, FSWO, SPO, Action Youth Pakistan and GOAL have provided some 8,300 plastic sheets, 8,100 blankets, 6,600 kitchen sets and 6,600 jerry cans to flood victims in Sindh.

The 40 agencies comprising the cluster, which is coordinated by IOM, have now provided emergency shelter and non food relief items to some 1.2 million flood victims nationwide. Their procurement pipeline will currently meet the needs of another 2.3 million people.

For more information on IOM's activities in Pakistan, to download the IOM Appeal or to donate to IOM's flood response, please go to: http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pakistan.

For information on the Emergency Shelter Cluster, please go to: http://sites.google.com/site/shelterpak2010/.

For additional information please contact IOM Islamabad. Saleem Rehmat, Tel. +92.3008560341. Email: srehmat@iom.int or Eliane Engeler, Tel. +92.300 852 6357. Email: engeler.iom@gmail.com