KARACHI:
What purpose was intended to be achieved by creating aspersions and promoting this social media campaign creating doubts and suspicion that much-needed international help to provide relief to over 33 million flood-affected Pakistanis may be pilfered and misused. There exists a National Disaster Management Authority, as well as PDMAs in all federating units, to distributed aid to flood victims and cater to them in all ways needed. If there are some misgivings based on mismanagement in 2005 Kashmir Earthquake by these state organisations, what is needed is that political parties get actively involved in relief operations and accountability. These starving victims of floods face death, starvation and malnutrition and desperately need help. Political negativity has no place in any democratic society, nor can it serve the people who need help. The fact that this social media campaign was intended for attention of the UN Secretary General and other international agencies is shocking and sickening. Political differences between rival parties must be objective and not divisive.
If any political party has any genuine doubts about transparency in distribution of much-needed aid to victims of this massive flood, it should get actively involved in aid distribution and relief operations on the ground. In times like this, when a nation faces a natural or man-made calamity, it is time to “separate wheat from the chaff”. These are no times for Game of Thrones nor the kind of political rivalry and hate that is being witnessed. The provincial governments in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh are as much responsible for providing relief as is the federal government and every political party that holds power.
Malik Tariq Ali
Lahore
Published in The Express Tribune, September 20th, 2022.
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