ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has expressed dissatisfaction over the diversion of funds away from Balochistan’s flood housing programme, warning that redirecting money from the multi-billion-rupee scheme into infrastructure projects could deepen poverty, raise disaster risk and stoke social tensions.

The housing programme was designed to rebuild homes for families displaced by flooding in one of Pakistan’s most climate-exposed provinces. Moving allocations elsewhere, the lender cautioned, would leave those households without the shelter support the programme was created to deliver.

The objection lands three years after the 2022 floods, with a large number of verified affected families across the country still waiting on promised reconstruction assistance.

The Bank’s concern touches a recurring pattern in disaster financing in Pakistan: recovery money approved for housing and livelihoods is frequently reallocated to visible infrastructure, leaving the slower, less photogenic work of rebuilding homes underfunded.

Provincial authorities have not yet issued a detailed public response to the Bank’s reservations.