China-donated tents provide comfortable environment to flood- affected IDPs in Pakistan

Our Correspondent
BADIN: Lali, a three-year-old girl, is malnourished and often cries due to a skin disease. This skin disease along with other water-borne, vector-borne and viral diseases are very common among flood-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
Despite uncountable challenges, Lali’s father Hero, a 35-year-old farmer and an IDP, is quite satisfied with China-donated tents being used in a newly established tent city in Matli town of Badin district in Sindh, where he is currently living along with his family. “These tents are very good, we feel very good in them. It’s a very strong and very accommodative tent,” Hero told Xinhua.
Around 95 tents were installed in the area where almost 581 people are currently living, including 379 children.
Following the devastation caused by this season’s monsoon rains-triggered heavy floods in Pakistan, China has already delivered 13,000 tents to the country by air. These tents are being utilized for the accommodation of the IDPs.
“It’s a very good quality tent. There is no issue of mosquitoes or water we face in these tents. Everything is good. We are living with comfort,” Magge, Hero’s mother, said.
Hero, who is living in a tent with his mother, wife as well as four daughters and a son, is a farmer and used to cultivate cotton and rice in his village, which is around 500 meters away from the area.
The whole family left their hometown about a month ago after it got flooded and had no other option but to live on a road. “My home and all my fields were destroyed from the flood water,” he said.
More than 15 days ago, after spending nearly several weeks on the road, the family was allocated in a tent by the local authorities and now they feel comparatively relieved in it. “Hundreds of thousands of times, I want to thank China for its compassion and support to us during this disaster,” Magge said, adding that “we had nothing left and had no place to live so we are very thankful for this support of the Chinese people.”
Sindh has been the worst-hit province of the country where at least 757 people died and 8,422 were injured from the floods since mid-June, according to the latest report released by the National Disaster Management Authority.