Over 3 million children in Pakistan may miss a semester of school due to extreme flooding damage to schools within the country.
Officials told the Associated Press that several local authorities have set up temporary learning centers in areas affected by the flooding in an effort to continue the children’s education. However, the officials say that given the scale of destruction, the centers may not be enough to keep children in school.
About 24,000 schools around the country have been affected by floods, disrupting the education of close to 3.5 million children, according to a World Bank report released Wednesday.
The unprecedented flooding began in June, with the United Nations attributing the disaster to climate change.
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Floodwaters caused $10 billion in damages as of Aug. 30 after having swept away crops, homes, bridges, and vital infrastructure of all kinds, including schools.
In the southern Sindh province, Pakistan’s worst-hit area, flooding damaged approximately 39% of all primary and secondary schools. Close to 15,000 schools, where 2.4 million children were enrolled, were hit by the floods, the local education department said, according to the Associated Press.
Prior to the floods, 3 in 4 Pakistani children were in “learning poverty,” meaning that they do not know how to read or understand simple text by the age of 10. With the widespread destruction of schools, the World Bank estimates “learning poverty” could go up 5%.
Nearly 1 in 7 Pakistanis have been affected by the floods, piling more devastation on a nation that is already in the middle of an economic and political crisis.
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As of Sept. 23, the death toll related to the floods has surpassed 1,600. In Sindh alone, 728 people were killed, 313 of them children, since July.
