By NNN-KUNA
Riyadh : Warning against a “looming humanitarian crisis” in Tajikistan due to the freezing cold, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) appealed to its member countries Monday to render emergency assistances to the Tajik people.
The severe cold wave this winter led to huge material and human losses, OIC Secretary General Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said, voicing grave concern over the situation in the Central Asian country.
The Republic of Taj ikistan, an OIC Member State, faces an unusually cold winter which has nearly crippled the country thus plunging a large number of its population in a dire need of food, fuel, blankets and medicines, according to a statement issued by the OIC Secretariat here.
This wave of an unprecedented cold unknown to Tajikistan for five decades is impacting negatively on all sectors of its economy and putting hardship on its people who are facing a wide-scale humanitarian disaster.
The grave situation requires the attention of the OIC Member States and the Muslim World at large in compliance with the sense of solidarity, the statement pointed out.
Ihsanoglu is, therefore, appealing to the entire Islamic Ummah to come forward to the rescue of the victims of these disastrous conditions so that the looming crisis is averted.
He said he and the chairman of the Islamic Solidarity Fund have decided to take the lead by releasing an emergency assistance from the Islamic Solidarity Fund (1SF) to help alleviate the sufferings of the hardly hit populations in the Republic of Tajikistan.