‘Watan’ cards fiasco

Nadra has stated that Watan cards, to compensate flood victims, have been issued to 300,000 people. What has not been mentioned by the authority is the massive mismanagement that has taken place in the distribution of the cards, which can be used to draw Rs20,000 from banks. News reports coming in have narrated accounts of riots at Nadra centres as people attempted to collect their cards. The absence of names on lists led to accusations of corruption and inefficiency, or a combination of both. A scheme intended to help people has in some ways backfired due to an inability to handle it smoothly. It is possible money has ended up in pockets. The robbing of flood victims through such wrongdoing is something that should make us question our morality – or the lack of it – and our very worth as a nation.

Nadra had launched a plan a few weeks ago to try and solve the problems. This involved an SMS messaging service aimed at allowing people to check if their names were on the lists. While there are over 90 million mobile phone subscribers in the country, it is not clear how many are able to utilise texting services which require literacy and some measure of technical savvy.

The police baton-charges at various places, the dispersal of desperate victims attempting to collect compensation and apparent discrepancies in names appearing on lists makes a mockery of a scheme intended to aid people caught in distress. The Watan card plan could have benefitted millions and helped counter the impression that the government has done too little for flood relief. Instead, mismanagement in the administration of the plan has added to the misery of people and done nothing for the image of either Nadra or other agencies involved. Attempting to shift blame to district administrations cannot detract from the fact that a great deal went wrong when it should not have.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2010.