CHITRAL: The United Nations Development Programme would help the district government of Chitralin making people resilient to natural calamities, said UNDP country director Ignacio Artaza.

Addressing representatives of local communities, hit by natural hazards, and talking to district nazim Maghfirat Shah during a meeting here on Tuesday, he said that besides rehabilitation of the flood-ravaged infrastructures, awareness was required to develop capacity of local people.

Mr Artaza said that UNDP would provide the required resources for the purpose but it was prime responsibility of the local communities to utilise the same properly in preparedness to cope with the situations emerging from natural calamities.

The UNDP country director said that glacial lakes outburst floods (GLOF) posed the greatest threat to the northern areas of the country. Responding to the situation, projects were being launched by UNDP with the financial assistance of Green Climate Fund in five districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and seven districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, he added.

He said that Chitral was one of the five districts where GLOF projects were being launched as the district hosted more than 500 glaciers out of which many had been declared as potential danger being at the verge of outburst.

Mr Artaza said that UNDP had already executed a number of projects in the district to rehabilitate the facilities, which were washed away by the floods last year.

Earlier, the district nazim told the UNDP director that the spate of natural disasters during the last eight years brought miseries to the people of Chitral. He said that district government was working in close liaison with the civil society organisations to meet the challenges posed by the climate change.

The representatives of disaster prone communities appreciated the efforts of the district government to help them prepare for the disasters, which threatened them in different forms including GLOF, flash floods, cloud bursts and land sliding. Later on, accompanied by assistant country director of UNDP Amanullah and first secretary of Royal Embassy of Norway in Islamabad Tom, Mr Artaza visited a number of flood-hit villages and talked to the affected people.

He inspected the projects executed by Hashoo Foundation funded by UNDP and the government of Norway in Zargarandeh, Hone and Ochusht villages. The projects are aimed at protecting the villages from flash floods in future.