The previous government paid the first tranche from the federal budget but the second tranche was to be provided by international lenders and donors. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
Almost four years after the devastating floods that submerged one-fifth of the country, as many as 80,000 affected families are still awaiting a second tranche of Rs20,000 that was promised to them in order to aid the reconstruction of their damaged homes.
The Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) government and now the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) government is awaiting the receipt of the sum, promised in donations by the Italian government as part of an international assistance package offered after the floods. At Rs20,000 per family, the total cost of providing assistance to the remaining 79,676 families is Rs1.6 billion or less than $17 million.
After the floods, the then-government announced that Rs40,000 would be donated to over 1.2 million families in two equal tranches. The previous government paid the first tranche from the federal budget but the second tranche was to be provided by international lenders and donors. These international donors - Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States and the World Bank (WB) – pledged $580 million for the second phase of the Citizen Damage Compensation Programme (CDCP) at the Development Forum held in Islamabad in December 2010.
A recent report of the WB-funded Pakistan Flood Emergency Cash Transfer project of $125 million revealed that there are some beneficiaries who are awaiting their second tranche payment. “The delay in processing these payments is due to difficulties in receiving the second half of financing from the government of Italy because of an uncompleted audit for the first tranche of funding received from the Italian government,” the report stated. The report noted that more than a million eligible households have been enrolled in the programme, and a majority of them have received both tranches of their benefit payment. The Express Tribune contacted the Italian embassy in Islamabad but has yet to receive a response regarding the matter.
The World Bank says CDCP beneficiaries were identified through the provincial housing damage surveys, which were then validated by a third party. Beneficiaries were registered for the programme after biometric verification from NADRA’s civil registry and they were issued a debit card allowing them to withdraw money from Point of Sales and ATM machines.
The World Bank says it has fully disbursed $125 million to the CDCP and the Bank’s project is closed. But ‘the remaining 79,676 families, accounting for 6.6 per cent of the total number of beneficiaries, await the remainder of their benefits’, the WB noted.
After the closure of the WB’s project, the issue of funding the administrative cost of the remaining payments has also arisen. To date, the administrative costs have been covered by the technical assistance component of the Bank’s project, which closed on March 31, 2014.
According to the WB report, more than three-fourths of the total beneficiaries have expressed satisfaction with the delivery of the programme’s benefits.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 18th, 2014.
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All the foreign aid money given to flood and 2005 earthquake victims were promptly stolen by the corrupt bureaucrats and/or used to purchase radars, fighter jets, missiles etc. The global community is tired of sending their tax-payer money to a country that has all the money to support a huge military and an expensive nuclear weapons program but doesn't want to assume responsibility to care for its own citizen when disaster strikes.
All the foreign aid money given to flood and 2005 earthquake victims were promptly stolen by the corrupt bureaucrats and/or used to purchase radars, fighter jets, missiles etc. The global community is tired of sending their money to a country that has all the money to support a huge military and an expensive nuclear weapons program.