490 killed in KP floods, relief and rehabilitation underway: Ali Amin Gandapur

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur has said that this year’s floods have caused unprecedented devastation across the province, killing at least 490 people and displacing thousands of families.

He was speaking during an informal meeting with journalists in Islamabad Monday.

Gandapur said heavy rains triggered landslides as high as 12 to 14 feet in districts including Buner, Shangla, Swabi, and Swat, destroying homes and infrastructure.

“All our institutions were mobilised and reached people within 24 hours. The martyrs have been evacuated, and relief efforts are ongoing,” he said.

According to the chief minister, the provincial government is compensating victims, with Rs2 million being given to the families of the deceased.

“Fifty percent of the injured have already received assistance, but we have run out of cheque books, which is why not all payments could be made immediately,” he admitted.

Families whose houses were completely destroyed are receiving Rs1 million each, though Gandapur acknowledged the amount is not enough to rebuild homes.

The chief minister also noted that government property repairs are underway alongside relief operations. He said that the pace and scale of this year’s flooding is unprecedented, but praised his administration’s response: “The rehabilitation work for victims has never been done at the scale we have achieved this time.”

Reflecting on lessons from the disaster, Gandapur said the destruction could have been reduced if dams had been built earlier.

“Unfortunately, we did nothing in the past. If we had planned, the money being spent now would not have been so much. After the 2022 floods in Dera Ismail Khan, we started some new dam projects, and more are being planned in Swabi, Mardan, and other vulnerable areas.”

He highlighted that cloudbursts — like the one in Buner — were a natural phenomenon caused by sudden temperature differences, not deforestation. “Where there are no forests, stones come down with the rains,” he explained.

Gandapur also reiterated his party’s policy of avoiding government-funded publicity campaigns. “It is public money. We should not waste it on advertisements. The real work should speak for itself,” he said.

The chief minister concluded by vowing to expand dam construction and improve disaster preparedness to protect lives and property in the future.