“It is a tragedy like never before,” says Mr. Furqan, who has also
served as a UN volunteer during the Kashmir earthquake. “The sheer
expanse of the devastation caused by floods is unprecedented,” he adds.
Hyderabad has 250,000 lakh Internationally Displaced Persons (IDPs),
while Jamshoro has 140,000. At Thatta the figure touches 940,000,
Furqan says.
He was a part of
TSF team headed by its delegate for Asia and the Pacific, Mr. Oisin
Walton and another student volunteer from AIT.
Narrating the story of a 79 year old villager Akbar of Khanpur village
in District Shikarpur in Sindh province, Mr. Furqan reveals that the
old man was sheltered at the Mehran Government School in Hyderabad.
Akbar came to the TSF calling center to get in touch with his son Allah
Bux, who resides in Saudi Arabia. His son was pleasantly surprised to
receive a call, since the two had no contact since the disaster. In
fact, the son had been told by the villagers that the inevitable had
happened. With his father having no money, Allah Bux arranged for a
wire transfer of money of 3000 Saudi Riyals immediately. “Though we
managed to help him and a lot of others, but much more remains to be
done,” Mr., Furqan adds.
Apart from Sindh, the TSF team was also active in the province of
Khyber Pakhtonwa where TSF has visited more than 150 locations in
Charsadda, Nowshera, Peshawar and Swat districts, allowing both men and
women to make a call, Mr. Walton says. Working along with Pakistani
NGOs Youth Resources Center (YRC) and Hope and Transformation for
Poverty (HTP), TSF, which is a partner of AIT has been able to provide
free telephone calls to over 11,000 families since the onset of the
disaster.
