Pakistan’s prime minister on Wednesday promised the country’s homeless people that the government will ensure they are paid to rebuild and return to their lives after the country’s worst-ever floods.

With winter is just weeks away, half a million people are living in camps after being displaced by the flood, which destroyed 1.7 million homes. So far, the government’s priority has been to deliver food, tents and cash to the victims. The floods have killed 1,481 people since mid-June and affected 33 million.

“We will do our best to financially help you so that you can rebuild homes” and return to a normal life, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif told several families living in tents and makeshift homes in the town of Suhbatpur in Baluchistan. “Those who lost homes and crops will get compensation from the government,” he said in his televised comments.

Sharif also told dozens of school children, who were studying in a tent with help from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in the town of Suhbatpur, that they will get a new school in the next two months.

“Pakistan never witnessed such huge climate-induced devastation,” Sharif told a gathering of lawyers in Islamabad on Wednesday. “It was painful to see inundated villages, towns and cities.”

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Sharif said the winter season will start in Pakistan after 15 days, and “then another challenge for the flood victims will be how to survive in the harsh cold as currently they were living in tents in summer.

Even providing clean drinking water to flood-affected people has become a challenge, he said.

The floods have destroyed 70% of wheat, cotton and other crops in Pakistan. Initially, Pakistan estimated that the floods caused $10 billion in damages, but now the government says the economic toll is far greater. The United Nations has urged the international community, especially those responsible for climate change, to send more help to Pakistan.

The monsoon rains have swept away entire villages, bridges and roads, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. At one point, a third of the country’s territory was inundated with water.

Multiple experts have blamed climate change for unprecedented rain-related damages in Pakistan.

Also Wednesday, Pakistan’s minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, told a gathering of lawmakers from the Asia Pacific in the capital, Islamabad that right now the entire world is facing a threat from climate change which, she said, “knows no border.”

She called for reducing emissions to save other countries from the damage that her country is facing now.

Meanwhile, the first planeload of aid from Saudi Arabia arrived in Pakistan overnight.

So far, U.N. agencies and various countries, including the United States, have sent about 90 planeloads of aid.

On Wednesday, Julien Harneis, who is U.N resident coordinator in Pakistan, told a news conference that member states had committed so far $150 million in response to an emergency appeal for $160 million.

Eleyele is situated in North-west of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria at an altitude of 125 m above sea-level and between7°25’00’ and 7°26’30’N latitudes and 3°51’00’ and 3°52’30’E longitudes (Figure 1).

The lake is manmade and was formed in 1939 by damming of the Ona River (part of a dense network of inland waterways that flow southward into the Lagos Lagoon), and the Otaru, Awba, Yemoja and Alapo streams also empty into the lake.

In 2019, The Oyo State Government said it has begun the rehabilitation of the 77-year- old Eleyele dam, which contributed in no small measure to the alarming flooding of August 26, 2011, that ravaged most parts of the state.

Unlike Ogun and Osun states, Oyo State is not particularly known for its large water areas. Of course, Oyo State has dams and water bodies scattered around but compared to its bordering states that received their names from rivers, one can say the water areas are not as magnified in Oyo.

Nonetheless, somewhere in Oyo State, a portage business has been thriving for years, depending solely on a water body which passes through Eleyele, Ibadan. Situated close to the Eleyele Water Cooperation is a place that could easily pass as a tourism centre. But, for years, it has served only as a means of essential transportation.

A replica of the road transportation business practised across Nigeria, able-to-do individuals purchase canoes and employ “sailors” who do the work of transporting people across the river and to other places of choice.

Every day, they take about 30 trips to communities like Lane 4, Oba Ado, Apete, Alaakuta and Across. They move people, goods and products from one of such places to another. Dwellers in this community, of course, are not so secluded as they have other means of land transportation, but for workers and students who have businesses on the other side of the river, the canoes are a better choice.

One of the sailors, who identified himself as a ‘Jboy’ explained how he and many others were employed by canoe owners and get paid monthly in return for their services.

He further stated that for N50 to N100, depending on distance, passengers get to cross the river. However, tourists pay more to explore the river for a longer time. He explained that the water body is quite large, and there are ports at each community where they drop off and pick up passengers every day.

As he noted, Eleyele waterside is one of those ports, and passengers going to different locations can be found sitting and waiting for more passengers to complete the canoe of 15 passengers.

Waterside Businesses
Interestingly, petty businesses have found their way to the ‘garage’, sprouting to sell different edibles and render services.

The port secretary, Samuel, who coordinates payment, also chipped in the fact that people of all age groups come to the canoe port for transportation, therefore needing the services.

For them, the canoe was faster than going extra miles around the river to reach their destination on land.

One of the petty businesses which have been depending on the river is the sale of fish caught overnight.

Because the river is surprisingly clean and free of plastic waste and the sort as would have been expected of a river so frequently used by humans, fingerlings and even big fishes have been surviving in the water.

“Fish sellers catch the fish and take it up the roadside for sale. Some other time, they kill it here if there’s anyone interested in buying,” Iya Eko, one of the traders, explained.