Urban slum population to be 93.06 million by next year

NEW DELHI:   There has been a growth of 17.8 million in urban slum population of the country in the last decade, according to a government committee formed to create a "reliable statistical model" of enumerating people living in such areas.

The Committee headed by Pranob Sen, Principal Advisor to the Planning Commission, states that the projected slum population in the country for the year 2011 would be 93.06 million from the 75.26 million estimated in 2001.

However, Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja said such a trend was expected due to increase in urbanisation but assured that the percentage of slums will come down due to government programmes for slum-development.

Read more...

UN says 800,000 cut off by Pakistan floods

ISLAMABAD:   About 800,000 people have been cut off by floods in Pakistan and are only reachable by air, the United Nations said Tuesday, adding it needs at least 40 more helicopters to ferry lifesaving aid to increasingly desperate people.

The appeal was an indication of the massive problems facing the relief effort in Pakistan more than three weeks after the floods hit the country, affecting more than 17 million people and raising concerns about possible social unrest and political instability.

"These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community," said John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

Read more...

Recovery from floods to take Pakistan years -Zardari

SUKKUR:   Pakistan could take years to recover from the floods disaster, its president said, as crisis talks began with the IMF which predicted the catastrophe would have a "major and lasting" economic impact.

An official in the province of Sindh said on Tuesday that up to 600,000 people were now in danger from rising flood waters in the south, nearly a month into a calamity that has affected a third of the country and cast some 4 million from their homes.

"We are strengthening embankments but 500,000 to 600,000 people in low-lying areas are still in danger and we are trying to persuade them to leave their areas," Sindh's irrigation minister, Jam Saifullah Dherjo, told Reuters.

Read more...

Foreigners among 14 killed in Nepal plane crash

KATHMANDU:   Fourteen people, including four Americans, a Japanese and a British national, were killed when their small plane crashed in bad weather in Nepal on Tuesday, an airport official said.

The Angi Air plane, returning to Kathmandu after failing to land in Lukla in eastern Nepal because of bad weather, crashed near the outskirts of the capital, Home (interior) Ministry official Jai Mukunda Khanal said.

Lukla is the gateway to Mount Everest.

Read more...

Indian flood aid: Pakistanis divided over its acceptance

ISLAMABAD:   Pakistan government might have accepted the Indian offer for flood aid, but Pakistanis today appeared sharply divided over the issue, with the critics saying that the acceptance came on a US call.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who was at the UN to attend an emergency session of the General Assembly on Pakistan's floods, said yesterday that the government of Pakistan had accepted the Indian offer of USD 5 million.

"The government has accepted the Indian aid offer on the US call," Senator Raja Zafar ul Haq, chairman of Muslim League (N) party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said.

Read more...

More Articles...