Manila: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $400 million concessional loan aimed at reconstructing flood-damaged houses and community facilities in Pakistan’s Sindh province. The initiative, part of a broader $1.5 billion commitment by the ADB from 2023 to 2025, focuses on enhancing resilience against climate change-induced disasters and supporting livelihood recovery in the region most impacted by the 2022 floods.
According to Asian Development Bank, the Sindh Emergency Housing Reconstruction Project will address the severe housing damages and infrastructure deficiencies inflicted by the floods, focusing on rehabilitation and resilience. Yevgeniy Zhukov, ADB Director General for Central and West Asia, emphasized the project’s role in rebuilding homes and communities while restoring basic services and livelihoods in Sindh. This province bore the brunt of the devastation, sustaining about 83% of the total housing damage, with approximately 2.1 million houses affected.
The reconstruction effort includes the provision of conditional cash grants for rebuilding 250,000 houses with designs resistant to multiple hazards and environmentally responsive features. It will also facilitate the community-driven construction of essential infrastructure such as drinking water facilities, sanitation, covered drainage, and renewable energy solutions, targeting 100,000 households across 1,000 villages. Furthermore, the initiative supports the recovery of livestock, agriculture, small enterprises, and e-commerce through additional grants.
ADB Director for Water and Urban Development, Srinivas Sampath, highlighted the project’s dual focus on building back better and promoting community-led strategies for climate resilience and disaster risk management. This approach aligns with the government’s resilient rehabilitation, reconstruction, and recovery strategy (4RF) and involves an integrated and sequential investment strategy to ensure synergy across sectors.
The project is also backed by a $500,000 technical assistance grant from ADB to enhance the government’s capabilities in procurement, safeguard compliance, and technical and financial management. Through these efforts, ADB continues its mission to foster a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific.