DHL relief team extends Pakistan stay
DHL’s Disaster Response Team will remain in Pakistan for an additional two weeks as the country struggles to cope with the fallout from the recent flooding. Following a request by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in Pakistan, the United Nations has recommended to extend the deployment of the Disaster Response Team in Pakistan for an additional fortnight.
In the wake of a continuing difficult situation caused by nationwide flooding, Pakistan is still dependent on international assistance and efficient logistics support at the airport in Islamabad.
With the extended deployment period, the DRT will spend a total of five weeks on site. Its members will continue to ensure fast, efficient unloading of incoming relief goods at the airport in Islamabad as well as the clear sorting of these supplies and palletising for further distribution.
On the extension of the deployment, CEO of Deutsche Post DHL Frank Appel said: “To date, our employees have handled 2,632 tons of relief supplies and assembled 2,500 special emergency packs for remote areas. Due to the nature of the disaster, the situation in Pakistan is improving only slowly which is why we decided to keep our Disaster Response Team on the ground.”
The Disaster Response Team (DRT) has been working in the military section of the Islamabad airport since August 26. To date, the DHL employees have unloaded and relief supplies like food, water, tents, tarpaulins, cloth and hygienic articles and prepared them for further transport into the country. A special challenge is the handling of unsolicited goods that often arrive damaged and that need to be sorted and repacked before further transport. In the first three weeks, the on-site team was staffed by 20 volunteers who rotated out on a weekly basis.
Over the course of the next two weeks, some 8-10 new colleagues from the DHL DRT pool of 200 volunteers will be sent to strengthen the relief efforts. The DRT’s work is based on an agreement with the Pakistani NDMA and a long-standing partnership with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In 2005, DHL entered into a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). DHL’s global network consists of there teams each of which is assigned to a specific geographic region covering Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and Africa. Each of these teams consists of a pool of about 200 specially trained DHL employees, who – in addition to their normal job – have volunteered to take part in the pro-bono humanitarian efforts.
