For five-year-old Haider Ali, the visit to his relatives in Jhol, Sanghar district on the Ashura holidays was a memorable one, as he returned to Karachi with a load of delicious biscuits and that too of international brands.
A resident of Model Colony, Ali was hanging around with his friends proudly showing them the biscuits that his uncle had given him when he was coming back to the city.
Pakistan Today observed that the packs of biscuits bore the stamps of World Food Programme (WFP) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
On closer inspection, however, it was revealed that the expiry deadline of the biscuits had passed many days ago.
The WFP and USAID had donated ration and other food stuff for the people displaced by floods throughout the province but the relief items, instead of being delivered to the flood-affected people, were sold out to traders in the markets and shops across rural Sindh.
The biscuits bearing the WFP stamp had an expiry date of December 2, while the biscuits from USAID did not have any manufacturing or expiry date on the packing.
On request, the minor boy took this scribe to his house, where his mother said that the family had visited her parents’ home in Jhol recently.
“My brother has a small general store in the main market of Jhol and he took Ali with him on the day when we were returning to Karachi,” she said. “I don’t know what was there in the shopping bag that Ali had when he came back with his uncle.”
“As the time to leave was near, my brother asked me to pack up and I put the shopping bag with the luggage. Upon reaching our home in Karachi, I unpacked the luggage and checked what was inside the shopping bag.
“There were too many biscuits and were packed in an entirely different material than those available in the local markets.
“I called my brother to ask what it was and he replied that these were the biscuits donated to the country by international agencies for children in the flood-affected areas of Sanghar,” Ali’s mother narrated.
She also gave the mobile phone number of her brother to Pakistan Today for further information.
When approached for details, her brother said that some people had come to his shop on pick-up minibuses and introduced these biscuits as a new international brand.
“Initially, I refused to buy the biscuits thinking they must be very expensive. But when they told me its price, it was a lot cheaper even than the locally-manufactured biscuits.
“But these biscuits and some other international brands are available in almost all talukas of Sanghar district,” he added.
“I also have a shop in Sanjhoro [another taluka in Sanghar], where the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has established an office for carrying out relief work for the flood survivors,” Ali’s uncle told Pakistan Today. “The biscuits are available there also.”
When approached for comments, OCHA Sindh Officer Dr Salman Safdar ruled out the possibility of relief items making their way into local markets for sale.
When told about the biscuits available with Pakistan Today as proof, the officer was of the view that the agency had ensured equal distribution of rations amongst the flood-affected people, but “if the people have sold the relief items to traders, then what can the OCHA do.”
“We are here to establish liaison between the international donor agencies and the local government for carrying out relief operations,” Safdar said. “We are also trying to get maximum aid to give the flood-affected people the maximum benefits.”
The OCHA officer said that there is also a possibility that the poor people had sold the donated items for some money or exchanged them for other goods as they also need flour, pulses and ghee instead of biscuits.
“The OCHA is not responsible if people sale out the distributed goods,” he added.
However, when asked about the expiry date of the biscuits from WFP, the officer was clueless.
