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PESHAWAR: Who gets the largest piece of pie and just how big the pie should be will be on top of the agenda when the Council of Common Interests (CCI) meets in Islamabad on Friday as suspicions abound that some provinces may be inflating their figures to gain the maximum out of the devastating floods that have hit Pakistan.
Officials say the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government would be making its case based on statistics to prove that figures submitted by the governments of Punjab and Sindh do not really tally and are contradictory in terms.
The KP says that it has provided more than 400,000 tons of relief goods to a total of 4.3 million affected by the floods and that the quantity of these goods, including food items and non-food items, healthcare material, etc., is on higher side compared to those given by the governments of Punjab and Sindh.
Punjab puts the number of flood-affected people in the province at 8.2 million, whereas the quantity of relief goods it has distributed, including non-food items and food items, officials here say, was not more than 300,000 to 400,000 tons. “The figures just don’t tally,” one official said.
Sindh on the other hand has claimed that a total of 1.4 million houses have been affected by the floods in the province. This sharply contrasts with the latest UN figures and those announced by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday which put the total number of houses damaged or destroyed in the entire country at 1.2 million.
A senior official from Sindh during a presentation to President Asif Zardari in Islamabad recently repeated the assertion although, officials here say, even if Sindh’s figures are accepted at face value and the average size of a family in Pakistan (which is 7, according to the UN) is factored in, the total number of the flood-affected in that province alone would come to roughly 9.8 million.
Add Sindh’s figures to Punjab’s 8.2 million flood-affected population, the total number of the affectees in the two provinces comes to 18 million, far more than the UN-acknowledged figure of 17 million for the whole county, including Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.
“It does not make any sense,” the official here said.
Quite ironically however and in sharp contrast to its own figures of the houses damaged by floods, Sindh has put the number of flood-affected people in the province at 3.7 million. The UN has put the total number of houses damaged or destroyed in Sindh at 470,910 only.
If Sindh’s figures are to be accepted as true, the average size of a family comes to around 3 persons. But if Sindh’s figures are to be calculated on the UN estimates, the average size of a family in that province comes to about 7 persons.
Officials here worry that Sindh because of its political influence and Punjab because of its great sway within the federal bureaucracy and amongst the technocrats would get away with more than their due share in the international assistance. “We stand nowhere,” the official said.
One example of just how lopsided the federal government’s response to the national catastrophe has been could be discerned from the number of relief dispatches to Multan – the home district of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
According to documents available with Dawn, the National Disaster Management Authority made a total of 117 dispatches to Multan between July 30 and August 30. This is against a total of 75 dispatches to the entire Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for the same period. “This creates doubts,” another official said, adding “there is no transparency there.”
Not only do the provinces want access to all information about the arrival and disbursement of relief assistance, they also want the distribution of international monetary assistance in a transparent and balanced manner, indicating mistrust among themselves but also towards the federal government.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa maintains that the nature of damage caused by floods in the province is different from Punjab and Sindh. In KP, it’s the infrastructure in the northern mountainous region that has been severely damaged, compared with Punjab and Sindh where agriculture and livestock in the plains have suffered the major damage.
As a senior official put it, KP is likely to be left to lick its own wounds as other provinces with more political and bureaucratic clout try to get the lion’s share of international assistance.
A pat on the back for good performance in the repatriation of Swat IDPs and the floods does not mean that the federal government should limit its support to KP, the official said, warning of fallout from further neglect of the people battered by militancy and the natural calamity.
Officials say diversity rather than uniformity should be the key in the reconstruction phase and that KP would raise the issue at the CCI to ask for more freedom of action for the provinces than a centralised, uniformed control.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...b%2C-sindh-290
Officials say the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government would be making its case based on statistics to prove that figures submitted by the governments of Punjab and Sindh do not really tally and are contradictory in terms.
The KP says that it has provided more than 400,000 tons of relief goods to a total of 4.3 million affected by the floods and that the quantity of these goods, including food items and non-food items, healthcare material, etc., is on higher side compared to those given by the governments of Punjab and Sindh.
Punjab puts the number of flood-affected people in the province at 8.2 million, whereas the quantity of relief goods it has distributed, including non-food items and food items, officials here say, was not more than 300,000 to 400,000 tons. “The figures just don’t tally,” one official said.
Sindh on the other hand has claimed that a total of 1.4 million houses have been affected by the floods in the province. This sharply contrasts with the latest UN figures and those announced by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday which put the total number of houses damaged or destroyed in the entire country at 1.2 million.
A senior official from Sindh during a presentation to President Asif Zardari in Islamabad recently repeated the assertion although, officials here say, even if Sindh’s figures are accepted at face value and the average size of a family in Pakistan (which is 7, according to the UN) is factored in, the total number of the flood-affected in that province alone would come to roughly 9.8 million.
Add Sindh’s figures to Punjab’s 8.2 million flood-affected population, the total number of the affectees in the two provinces comes to 18 million, far more than the UN-acknowledged figure of 17 million for the whole county, including Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.
“It does not make any sense,” the official here said.
Quite ironically however and in sharp contrast to its own figures of the houses damaged by floods, Sindh has put the number of flood-affected people in the province at 3.7 million. The UN has put the total number of houses damaged or destroyed in Sindh at 470,910 only.
If Sindh’s figures are to be accepted as true, the average size of a family comes to around 3 persons. But if Sindh’s figures are to be calculated on the UN estimates, the average size of a family in that province comes to about 7 persons.
Officials here worry that Sindh because of its political influence and Punjab because of its great sway within the federal bureaucracy and amongst the technocrats would get away with more than their due share in the international assistance. “We stand nowhere,” the official said.
One example of just how lopsided the federal government’s response to the national catastrophe has been could be discerned from the number of relief dispatches to Multan – the home district of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
According to documents available with Dawn, the National Disaster Management Authority made a total of 117 dispatches to Multan between July 30 and August 30. This is against a total of 75 dispatches to the entire Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for the same period. “This creates doubts,” another official said, adding “there is no transparency there.”
Not only do the provinces want access to all information about the arrival and disbursement of relief assistance, they also want the distribution of international monetary assistance in a transparent and balanced manner, indicating mistrust among themselves but also towards the federal government.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa maintains that the nature of damage caused by floods in the province is different from Punjab and Sindh. In KP, it’s the infrastructure in the northern mountainous region that has been severely damaged, compared with Punjab and Sindh where agriculture and livestock in the plains have suffered the major damage.
As a senior official put it, KP is likely to be left to lick its own wounds as other provinces with more political and bureaucratic clout try to get the lion’s share of international assistance.
A pat on the back for good performance in the repatriation of Swat IDPs and the floods does not mean that the federal government should limit its support to KP, the official said, warning of fallout from further neglect of the people battered by militancy and the natural calamity.
Officials say diversity rather than uniformity should be the key in the reconstruction phase and that KP would raise the issue at the CCI to ask for more freedom of action for the provinces than a centralised, uniformed control.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...b%2C-sindh-290
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