The Pakistani community living in the Kingdom has come forward to donate generously for the flood-hit families back home, responding to their embassy’s call seeking assistance on humanitarian grounds.

Underlining the need for enormous efforts to bring back the flood-affected people to normalcy, charge d’ affaires at Pakistan Embassy Khayyam Akbar recently gave a clarion call at a community gathering here, urging the Pakistani community to support the families back home.

Subsequently, the embassy organized a meeting at the diplomatic quarter on Friday, a public holiday in the Kingdom, to facilitate maximum cooperation and participation by community members, an embassy official at the community welfare department told Arab News on Sunday.

The relief facilitating meet was presided over by the charge d’ affaires and began with a recitation of the holy Qur’an followed by a soulful Naat (hymn) by Tanveer Mian.

Addressing the gathering, Akbar highlighted the disastrous scale of the flood with a power point statistical presentation and urged the community to come forward for this noble cause.

The presentation was followed by a brief note on the flood disaster by the head of Chancery Abbas Sarwar Qurseshi.

Photos of the devastation caused by the recent disaster in Pakistan were also put up on the wall to make a pictographic assessment of the ground zero and affected families living in tough conditions due to the fury of the flood.

Citing a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) report, the official said that an estimated 2,000 schools were destroyed across Punjab alone, the worst-hit province due to rains and floods where more than 1.7 million of the population has been affected with 318 people dead and more than 500 injured.

According to the NDMA, nearly 17,000 houses have been completed destroyed by the flood.

Earlier, a cultural group also performed to regale the audience at the gathering.

Community singer Asad Ali performed on a track of a famous national song while Waqar Wamiq motivated the crowd by his poem, written on the catastrophic flood.

The event was moderated by embassy officials, community leaders including Hafiz Abdul Wahid, Dr. Asif Qureshi, Faisal Alvi, Rashid Butt, Khalid Akram Rana, Mohib Shalmani, Fayaz Khan, Waqar Naseem Wamiq, Abdul Basit, Abid Gill, Manoha Fazil, Hammad Abid and Mueen Anwar.