CCI approves aid oversight council

The National Oversight Disaster Management Council will ensure transparent use of funds for flood-hit areas.

ISLAMABAD:

The Council for Common Interests (CCI) has approved the formation of the National Oversight Disaster Management Council to ensure transparent use of funds for rehabilitating flood-hit areas.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters after the CCI meeting on Monday that the oversight council will begin functioning as soon as provinces submit their recommendations for representatives.

The issue had led to acrimony between the government and the chief of the main opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Nawaz Sharif who had earlier proposed forming a high-powered commission. The government had agreed with his proposal but later backtracked saying that the provinces were not approving the idea and announced its own council along similar lines.

The 13-member council will comprise representatives of the federal government, the provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Khyber-Paktunkhwa has already nominated its members for the proposed council but other federating units are yet to submit names to the federal government. The prime minister will then decide a chairperson, which the government claims would be a “non controversial and reputed figure”. Kaira said that the CCI has also approved that Rs20,000 will be given to each family of flood survivors as a first installment, which would be shared equally by the federal government and the respective provincial government. However, he was not sure of the total amount that will be disbursed or the number of recipients but said that the exact number will only be ascertained after a detailed survey of damages.

Using data from the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), the government will identify the head of every family who will be given an ATM-type “smart card” and then paid the first installment.

Kaira said that to generate additional resources locally, the CCI has given the finance minister the mandate to hold discussions with provinces and devise a fund-generation mechanism. But he did not give specific details about new taxes to be levied to raise funds. Kaira also said that the council had decided to provide free fertilizer to farmers with less than 25 acres of land in affected areas throughout Pakistan.

Earlier, in his opening remarks, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said that the floods had wreaked havoc in 79 of the Pakistan’s 124 districts. He said that the floods had displaced millions of people, killed over 1,752 and injured 2,697 people.

He said that the floods had caused massive damage to standing crops over 1.3 million acres of land and destroyed physical infrastructure, bridges, roads, schools, health centres, buildings and homes. “About 1,000 bridges and over 4,000 kilometres of roads had been damaged, which would require eight to nine billion rupees to rebuild,” he said. Gilani said that donors had so far pledged a total of $953.7 million bilaterally and through the United Nations. “Over 77 countries have contributed in cash and kind for relief and rehabilitation of flood-affected people,” he said, adding that the foreign ministers of 27 European Union members were informally meeting in Brussels on September 10.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2010.