Karachi, Aug 08: Pakistan's cabinet ministers will donate one month's salary to a relief fund for the thousands of victims of floods that have ravaged parts of southern Pakistan, the government's spokesman said today. The donations were announced as officials said they recovered the bodies of three women and two men found stuck in fallen trees and bushes once submerged by flood waters in remote villages of Sindh, the hardest-hit province. This raised the death toll to 236 since monsoon rains began in Pakistan last month.
President Pervez Musharraf visited flooded areas in Sindh and promised the homeless the government would pay for their losses, said Mussarat Hussain Khawaja, a mayor of Sindh's Badin district, about 250 km southeast of Karachi, the capital of Sindh. Musharraf spent over two hours visiting relief camps and flood-hit villages and he assured people of sufficient monetary compensation and food,'' Khawaja said, speaking by telephone from Badin.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters in the capital, Islamabad, that cabinet ministers have decided to donate one month's pay to a flood relief fund. But he gave no details about individual salaries or how much money would be donated.
Bureau Report