Police on Sunday arrested five people and recovered large quantities of stolen relief goods which had been sent by a foreign country to help last year’s flood victims.
Police said the accused were shifting the relief goods including tents, blankets, generators and other preserved food from a government godown located in Malir area to another location. On a tip off, police raided the area and arrested five people and recovered the relief foods.
Area locals told police that Provincial Disaster Management Cell (PDMC) personnel were involved in large scale corruption of relief goods and they, during the night, were involved in shifting relief items from the said godown to an unidentified location. Sources said at least 90 percent of the relief goods which had been kept in an institute established in a government college near Malir University had been manhandled.
Police said several people, mostly PDMC personnel, had been arrested for stealing relief goods during the past few months, adding that the detainees had admitted their involvement in the theft. However, PDMC Director General Saleh Farooqi insisted that the PDMC personnel were shifting the relief goods from one godown to the other to vacate space for students in the said institution.
He said certain elements wanted to get relief goods through illegal procedures and were trying to defame the PDMC after they had failed in their attempts.
