India can manage flood situation on its own: UN

A file picture of Emblem of United Nations. Photo: AP

Offering all possible help to the Indian government in handling massive floods in its two southern states, a top UN official has said the country is capable of managing such crisis on its own.

“Although the floods are extremely large they haven’t so far asked for our help. If they do we can offer what assistance we can,” UN official for Emergency Relief John Holmes told reporters here.

“It is India’s sovereign right to decide whether they want or need to ask help or not. They have a huge capacity of their own,” he added.

Acknowledging that India generally handled humanitarian crises internally, Mr. Holmes said, “it is their habit as with China to try and deal with these issues themselves and they’ve been pretty good at that“.

“Again huge experience because India being such a huge place is also extremely disaster prone in different areas,” he added.

More than 250 people have died and millions have been affected due to heavy rains and flash floods that have hit Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the past week.

Meanwhile, the UN has appealed for $74 million in emergency aid for Philippines where some one million people have been impacted by the storm and flood. The world body is also channelling aid into Indonesia and Bhutan that have been hit by earthquakes.

“This is very bad time for this region,” Mr. Holmes said. .

“Different disasters not linked together but coming together in time in a particularly tragic way,” he said.