‘Double-standards’: Govt takes over 15 women’s crisis centres

Decision places strain on overstretched human rights ministry budget.

ISLAMABAD:

The federal government has taken the liability of 15 women’s crisis centres named after Benazir Bhutto, despite the delegation of social sector services to the provincial governments under the 18th amendment.

In addition to being unconstitutional, the decision to place the projects under the Ministry of Human Rights has further strained the already overstretched Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). The cost of the 15 Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Centres for Women is almost three times the non-development budget allocated to the ministry for the current fiscal year – the government has allocated only Rs366.8 million for the human rights ministry’s non-development expenses while the cost of one centre is around Rs50 million.

Initially, the government had transferred a dozen of these centres to the PSDP. However, official documents revealed that three more centres, situated in Quetta, Khuzdar and Peshawar, have been transferred to the programme as well.

While the cost of the three recently transferred centres is unknown, according to the documents, the government has released an amount of Rs800,000 for them anyway. Along with that amount, Rs21.3 million have also been released for the remaining 12 centres, all situated in Punjab.

When the federal government delegated social sector responsibilities to the provincial governments under the 18th constitutional amendment, centres like these either had to be handed over to provincial authorities or closed down by June 2011 if they refused to take charge of them.

A Planning Commission (PC) official told The Express Tribune that the former had no choice but to keep financing them following Punjab government’s refusal to do so. He said the prime minister himself approved the takeover of the centres in a summary forwarded by the finance minister.

Another PC official, meanwhile, claimed the reason behind the government’s takeover of the centres was the attachment of Benazir Bhutto’s name to them.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2013.