Khawaja Zaheer Ahmed - PDMA

53. Be that as it may, as relief activities progressed, the Federal Government
also responded under general perceptions of mistrust, to plug communication
gap with the affectees and their sympathisers, albeit belatedly, to set-up the
NODMC, as an apolitical national level oversight body, with representatives from
the Provincial Governments on board, to oversee transparency of post-flood
financial disbursements for the people and Federating units. Under the conditions
then obtaining on ground, that had become an international necessity. But even
that platform was not instituted by invoking the window provided by Ordinance
LIII of 2007! Under such state, adequacy or otherwise of the specified
departmental ‘Standard Operational Procedures’ (SOPs), degree of
compliance by official agencies / officials, acts of malfeasance, misfeasance and
even nonfeasance before, during or after the 2010 Flood, including post-flood
management for IDP’s orderly rehabilitation left many open and unanswered
questions. If affectees’ expectations exceeded what reached them, the
governments had to reprioritize commitments of already squeezed resources,
diverted to decade old wars including the war on terror.
Ministry of Defence (MOD):
54. It assisted through weather forecasts, and by extending aid to civil power
during the 2010 Flood disaster. The role of the concerned departments is
discussed below:-
a) Flood Forecasting Division (FFD) of the Pakistan Meteorological
Department ‘has a central role in the flood forecasting and warning’. It
sources hydro-meteorological data from various national and international
counterparts; actual rainfall during July-August 2010 at various locations is self-
evident from the data cited in an earlier part. The FFD collates the rainfall data
from various stations besides satellite data from the SUPARCO to prepare its
flood forecasts disseminated to 350 addressees concerned with various aspects
of flood management or relief organizations. But its current technical capacity is
limited to 4-days advance warnings, against 10-days international best that was
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