Women face most problems after Pakistani floods, says church worker

Published: 2007-07-30

BANGALORE, India (CNS) -- More than a month after floods in Pakistan left thousands homeless and hundreds of villages unreachable, women face the most difficulties, said a church aid worker. The majority of women are extremely weak due to a lack of sufficient food and drinking water, said Shagufda Ali, a female program manager in Pakistan for the U.S. bishops' international aid agency, Catholic Relief Services. After she visited several remote, flood-hit villages in the Turbat district, Ali told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview that women were having a hard time fetching drinking water, clearing the debris and recovering belongings from their houses damaged by the floods. "The females do not have any access to toilets," she said. "Lack of privacy and hygiene is worrying the women most." As a result, she said, women have to wait until dark for the privacy needed to take care of themselves. The women also are extremely reluctant to interact with males, so aid agencies have been employing female relief workers to help them, noted Ali.

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