Poverty of attention: The bitter truth about sweet homes

Of the 33 such homes for orphans in Pakistan, only two are in Balochistan

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Functional Committee, while convening a meeting on problems of less developed areas, observed that the government has again neglected the most resource-rich province of Balochistan while running its poverty programmes.

“It’s a joke with poor people. Is it an irony of events or sheer negligence by the authorities?” asked Senator Rubina Irfan during the meeting on Monday.

According to a ‘poverty survey’ carried out by Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), more than 0.45 million families from a total of 1.03 million households in Balochistan have been declared eligible for financial support.

PBM Deputy Managing Director Aslam Chaudhry informed the lawmakers that 33 sweet homes have been established by PBM for orphans across the country. On this, Senator Irfan criticised that only two of these 33 sweet homes have been established in Balochistan.



Senator Khalida Parveen also regretted the negligence of government-run supporting agencies which according to her have forgotten south Punjab. “Not a single sweet home was built in Dera Ghazi Khan division, perhaps the most poverty-hit area,” she observed after going through the working papers submitted to the committee on Monday.

The figures provided to the committee revealed that only a few dozen orphan children from Balochistan are studying in these two sweet homes, while in the remaining 31 sweet homes established in other provinces more than 3,300 children are being provided all the necessities of life with modern education in best private schools.

Meanwhile, the managing director of SSGCL Sohaib Warsi, while briefing the committee, said that out of the total 32 districts in Balochistan 18 are having no infrastructure for the provision of gas.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2014.