KARACHI: Lockdown in Sindh in the wake of coronavirus pandemic will enter into third week on Monday (April 6) has broken the patience and resources of many even the middle class while at this hour of need when all what we need is a joint strategy for the people, the federal and provincial governments seem to be at odds over how they should take care of the needy.
The federal and provincial tiers of the government have currently announced three programs for the needy people stranded in lockdown. One of them is the brainchild of the federal government, whereas the other two have been envisaged by the Sindh government.
All these programs are trying to provide relief to the people through some mechanism at the district level. However, there seems to be no coordination among them and all the three seem to be working in isolation.
Till date, none of these three programmes has catered to a significant number of people in this hour of need.
The federal government has announced the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme, under which 786,000 families are to be identified in the 23 districts of Sindh by the provincial government. With a monthly allocation of Rs3,000 for each of these families, they will be provided with a four-month lump sum amount of Rs12,000.
The Sindh government, in the meantime, has announced the Corona Emergency Ration Package, for which it has released Rs580 million for the distribution of food items to the daily wagers and allocated Rs20 million for each district of the province.
Additionally, the provincial government has released Rs569.604 million from the provincial Zakat Fund Account, from which a total of 94,934 families will get an amount of Rs6,000 each. The provincial government has also decided to launch a mobile application for the disbursement of cash to the needy people through a mobile cash transfer mechanism.
When all these allocations through different programs seem inadequate given the magnitude of the crisis, a bigger problem is that the district administration has been facing immense trouble in the implementation of the programs.
The only thing that is common in all the three programs is the involvement of district administrations. As for Karachi, there are six districts in the city comprising a total of 209 union committees for its urban areas and 38 union councils for its rural localities.
There are also six cantonment boards in the city, which comprise wards instead of union councils. Some of the cantonment boards even lie in multiple districts of the city.
The District East has 31 union committees; District Central has 51; District West has 46; District South has 31, of which the Saddar zone has 16 and the Lyari zone has 15; District Korangi has 37 and District Malir has 13 union committees. Of the 38 union councils in the rural areas of the city, 32 are in District Malir and six are in District West.
The provincial services, general administration & coordination department has formed seven-member COVID-19 relief committees in every union council, union committee or ward of the city for the identification of the needy families.
The same seven-member committees are supposed to gather data of the needy families for all the programs of the federal and provincial governments.
The convener of each committee is the assistant commissioner of the relevant town or taluka as a representative of the deputy commissioner of the relevant district. The other six members of the committees are the chairmen of the union council or union committee, councillor of ward or town or municipality or member of the district council, chairman of the local zakat committee of the respective area, representative of a prominent NGO, a notable personality of the respective union council or union committee or ward, a prominent female social worker or female councillor and any member co-opted.
The purpose of the committees, according to the notification of the provincial coordination department, is to identify the needy persons such as daily wagers, labourers, street hawkers, and other impoverished people residing in the relevant union council or union committee or ward of the town or municipality.
The committees are also supposed to scrutinise and maintain the record of the beneficiaries and distribute ration bags among the deserving people at their doorstep. They are also to ensure social distancing during this exercise and file a daily distribution report of the beneficiaries with the Social Protection Strategy Unit.
Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani, in another order, conveyed the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the distribution of rations among the needy families under the provincial government’s Corona Emergency Ration Package.
Each ration bag is to include of 10 kilogram (kg) of wheat flour, five kg of rice, two kg of sugar, two litres of cooking oil, one kg each of daal moong, daal masoor (split red lentil), daal channa and white channa (chickpea), and 250 grammes each of red chilli powder, turmeric powder (haldi) and coriander powder (dhania), and one packet of salt.
During the distribution of rations, the commissioner’s order strictly forbade any sort of gathering in order to follow the social distancing guidelines. “Only house-to-house distribution will be made from 5am to 7am or late night,” the order said and added that the distribution will be made on an equitable basis, focusing on the poorest union councils and catering to the poorest, needy or underprivileged segments of society.
Meanwhile, the provincial government’s cash distribution program seems to be running parallel to the federal government’s Ehsaas Emergency Program as no details of the former’s beneficiaries have been shared by the provincial government.
The Sindh government, according to a notification issued by its home department, intends to launch a mobile registration system for the disbursement of cash to needy persons, by getting them registered and verified by the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) so that no more than one person from a family can avail the facility.
As of now, an assistant commissioner of the city told The News, the Sindh government has decided to back-burner this program due to lack of coordination with the federal government. However, Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Shaikh, who heads the task force formed by the Sindh government for the distribution of rations, told publication that the Sindh government would continue with the project even hough the federal government was not coordinating with it.
He added that the Sindh government would ensure that the beneficiaries of its cash transfer project were other than those being benefitted under the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) or the Ehsaas programme.
He maintained that the two programs of the Sindh government involving cash and rations were different from the federal government’s project. For the ration distribution, he said the Sindh government was distributing 15-day rations keeping in mind an average family size of 5.5 persons, according to the current census.
When asked about the families having more members than the average, the energy minister said the chairmen of union councils and union committees would be on board along with the assistant commissioners during the distribution of rations. “The team will distribute the rations accordingly.”
However, several of the elected chairmen have complained that they have been sidelined after the preparation of the list of beneficiaries and not taken on board regarding the distribution of rations.
Elected chairmen of union councils and union committees also showed extreme reservations about the way thing are being done. “It has been almost 15 days and labourers aren’t earning anything,” said the elected chairman of District East’s Union Committee 21, Junaid Mukati of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
“Just a day before yesterday we were told to revisit our list and add occupations of all the beneficiaries. How’s that even possible to contact each and every family again?”
Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Mushtaq Ahmed from District Central’s Union Committee 14 complained that they had not been taken on board by District Central Deputy Commissioner Farhan Ghani regarding the distribution of rations.
“We have been in the area for the last 30 years. We have a strong structure at the grassroots level. We know in and out about families living in all the UCs. Things would have been smooth had we been taken on board and informed properly,” he said, Geo News Reported.
The District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) have also been completely sidelined in the entire process. DMC West Chairman Izhar Ahmed Khan of the MQM said they had no knowledge of what was happening at the district level.
“District West has the largest population of the poor and its elected DMC council has no idea how these needy people are being helped,” he lamented and added that it was not the assistant commissioner’s job to distribute rations. “You have to have the elected DMC council with you.”
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