Analysis of current situation

The current political situation in Pakistan is calm but has a chance of political unrest because of
the public perception of an ‘’ineffective government’’. Experts say that if this flood is not dealt
with in a correct matter, the political unrest can reach a point as that it did in the 1970 Bola
cyclone hitting East Pakistan. The governments’ response to the cyclone came very late and
there were so called ‘’knicks and knacks’’ in the relief effort process. This caused 50.000 people
rally accusing the president of inefficiency and demanded his resignation. The government was
also criticized by local political leaders, accusing the government of ‘’gross neglect, callous
indifference and utter indifference".

Pakistan has two main seasons, winter and summer; this is due to its sub-tropical location. The
summer season of the country lasts for seven months in plain and for four months in highland,
while the winter season varies for five months in plain and seven months in highland. Pakistan
experiences four rainy seasons i.e. winter rainfall, pre-monsoon rainfall, monsoon rainfall, and
post monsoon rainfall. These seasons are within the monsoon season from July to mid-
September. The flood was from the monsoon rainfall.

The current infrastructural situation in Pakistan is 2a mess. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial
minister of information, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said "the infrastructure of this province was
already destroyed by terrorism. Whatever was left was finished off by these floods." He also
called the floods "the worst calamity in our history." Four million Pakistanis were left with food
shortages. The flood has destructed roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and
communications. Officials say more than 45 major bridges and thousands of kilometers of roads
have been destroyed or badly damaged. Floods have damaged an estimated 3.916 km
miles of highway and 5.646 km of railway. There were also 5.000 schools destroyed. An article
in The New York times stated that this flood has set the infrastructure in Pakistan back for
years.

The safety situation in Pakistan is unpredictable. Right now in the midst of the floods and the
chaos surrounding it officials are scared that the Pakistani Taliban will have time to regroup and
attack. The Taliban have reportedly threatened to attack Western aid workers according to a US
official, but a Taliban spokesperson has said: We have not issued any such threat; and we don’t
have any plans to attack relief workers." The Taliban has also asked the Pakistani government
to reject aid from Christians and Jews in return they would raise $20 million.
Previous experiences in Pakistan

Action Against Hunger has extensive experience in Pakistan due to their previous relief effort
projects.They have been operational in Pakistan since 2004.

AAH has re-entered Pakistan in 2005 with the Kashmir earthquake. In response to the disaster,
AAH immediately sent an assessment team to Islamabad, to help measure the scope of the
damage and the most pressing needs of the affected population. After a rapid assessment, ACF
has set up shop and is preparing to assist the victims of the earthquake. ACF's initial response
will focus on ensuring that survivors of the earthquake have adequate supplies of food aid and
potable water, with a reassessment of the needs of the survivors after the most serious effects
of the earthquake have passed. They sent a cargo plane on with 30 tons of freight, including dry
rations to respond to the nutritional needs of the population and equipment for the treatment,
transport, and distribution of water.  AAH than felt the need to increase its aid to those affected
by the earthquake in Pakistan. The organization has distributed 2.5 metric tons of food, and
major distributions of shelter items (tents, blankets) in conjunction with UNICEF. It also
distributed additional food, food vouchers, and hygiene kits (soap, toothpaste) to more than
33,000 people in the hard-hit and difficult-to-access areas surrounding Battagram and Bala Kot.

AAH has also worked through an earlier flooding disaster in Pakistan in 2007. Action Against Hunger
has initiated an emergency program to address water, sanitation, and hygiene that will assist 20,000
flood-affected persons in the districts of Shadadkot and Dadu. The program’s integrated approach
includes the following activities:

 Water trucking in the IDP camps (as they are accessible by road and are not sufficiently
covered by the current governmental water trucking schemes);
 Hand-augered wells with hand-pumps (an accepted water source for this area), to be
established in flood-affected villages that lack road access;
 Water treatment/purification at the household level (to be implemented in places where the
water turbidity allows the distribution of water purification tablets);
 Construction of Emergency toilets (mainly in IDPs camps) for general sanitary conditions,
and to address privacy issues for women;
 A Non-Food Items (NFI) distribution to be conducted (including containers for water
transport/storage as well as hygiene items). NFI distributions are complemented by
sensitization sessions on their use;
 Hygiene promotion campaigns(to focus on the use of safe drinking water, use of toilets,
hand-washing with soap at appropriate times).1

Transportation process analysis

1
www.actionagainsthunger.org
The relief goods that need to be delivered to Doctors Without Borders starts in the warehouse in the
Harbour of Rotterdam. These relief goods are already assembled in the warehouse and will wait for
shipment orders. Once there is a shipping order, personnel will load the relief goods on to the ships,
this will cost maximum of one day. The picked date of shipping the relief goods will be around the first
of December, but this can always change because of unpredictable complications that can occur. If
there are no shipping orders the relief goods still need to wait for shipping orders. At this point the
estimated personnel for loading the containers will be fifty. When the relief goods are loaded on to the
ship, the ship will go through custom clearance in Rotterdam harbour to check if there are any goods
that cannot be exported. If there are no problems with the custom clearance the ship will depart to the
port of Karachi in Pakistan, where personnel are waiting to unload the relief goods. The custom
clearance will take approximately few hours, but if problems do occur during the custom clearance
process, the relief goods need to be reorganized and go through custom clearance again and this will
cause a delay of few days.

The transportation through sea to Karachi takes approximately nineteen days, fourteen forty feet
containers, and one container ship. There should also be a consideration of the climate during the sea
transport, because it will be shipped in the winter, and this can cause heavy storms on sea. When the
ship arrives safely in Karachi, it will first go through custom clearance again, and this will take a few
hours. If during the custom clearance in Karachi problems occur, the ships will be checked and will try
go through custom clearance again. When everything is fine at the custom clearance, the ship will
arrive at the port of Karachi and there will be personnel to unload the relief goods and load it on the
trucks that will be used in the transport across the land to Sukkur and Multan. At this point the amount
of relief goods will be divided into two and placed on trucks, one part will be sent to Sukkur and the
other part to Multan.

There will be eighty-one five-ton capacity trucks available to load the relief goods on, plus additional
ten trucks in order to prevent overload per truck. This means that there will be at least hundred more
personnel for driving the trucks and twenty more personnel to unload the containers. The estimated
time for unloading the ship and loading the trucks will be three days. When the trucks are fully loaded
they can depart from Karachi to Sukkur and Multan, and the estimated time from Karachi to Sukkur is
around six hours and to Multan it will take around eleven hours. Because of the terrible state of the
infrastructure in Pakistan, the estimated time to drive to Sukkur and Multan will be considerable longer.
Also the safety in Pakistan is very unpredictable, officials are afraid that the Pakistani Taliban can
regroup themselves during the midst of the flood, and this can cause dangerous problems to the relief
goods that are being transported by trucks. Therefore there should be some kind of protection around
the trucks. When the trucks arrive safely at Sukkur and Multan, the relief goods will be unloaded of the
trucks and handed to Doctors Without Borders, from that point they will be in charge of the relief
goods. If everything goes as planned and the relief goods are shipped on the first of December, the
relief goods in Sukkur will arrive on the 26th of December and on the 27th of December in Multan.

Transportation process costs

AAH will use online donations, monthly giving, honor a loved one, stock transfer and donate a vehicle
in order to fund the transportation costs to Sukkur and Multan. Also AAH will be sponsored by few
companies such as Unilever and Vodafone.

Because the ship that goes to Karachi needs to be loaded, fees has to be paid in Rotterdam, and that
is €48. Also the estimated payment of the personnel in Rotterdam Harbour are €500 per personnel per
day. This is around €10 per hour. Instead of buying, renting would be much cheaper as the containers
will only be used for this project. A new container would cost around €3.000 if bought. and renting
would be €300 per container. The cost of the ocean transportation from Rotterdam to Karachi will be
€4.000. Of course the ship will also be in transit in Karachi because of unloading the relief goods on to
the trucks and this will cost €20 and port fees has to be paid, this will be around €200. The cost of the
trucks are €125 per truck and the drivers cost around €300 per driver. The estimation of the transport
cost to Sukkur and Multan are described in the table below.