A widow’s letter to PM Nawaz Sharif

Making life easier for vulnerable sections of the society

To

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,

Islamic Republic of Pakistan

Dear Sir,

I am a widow. Most of my funds are invested with the ‘Behbood Scheme’ meant for widows like me. The profits from the investment take care of most of my expenses. I am sure this is true of other widows as well.

However, Mr Prime Minister, the percentage of profits per month was greatly reduced last year. This is a huge setback for people like us as this source of income provides us the much needed economic dependence.

Dear Mr Prime Minister, I read the newspapers daily. From the expenses incurred by our able government under you one gets a distinct impression that the funds at your disposal are either grossly misspent in places avoidable or in areas that are far from affecting directly the lives of common people like me. For example, a leading newspaper wrote, “The opposition on Thursday in Punjab Assembly took on the treasury benches and Punjab government for allegedly misappropriating funds under the supplementary budget for the year 2014-15 on VIP protocol for government officials, expenditure on the personal residences of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, flyovers and roads instead of emergency purposes.” (June 16, 2015) The paper discusses this at some length, quoting PML-Q MPA Khadija Umar that Punjab Murree House had received 4.3 million under the supplementary budget and the Punjab House in Karachi had received huge funding despite the CM Punjab not availing it this year.

Really, Mr Prime Minister?

If we have this kind of funds for VIP protocol and still not being availed, do widows like me deserve a cut on our sustenance funds?

Another wonderful project by your government has been the Metro Bus project. The red buses are a treat to the sore eyes. Just unfortunate that a newspaper stated, “The Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) has started revising the budget of the metro bus project as the estimated cost is likely to go up from Rs44.21 billion to Rs50 billion.”(September 27, 2014) Must be some confusion somewhere. How can this lovely project cost so much? That too, only just for Islamabad project.

Pakistan Today wrote, “The government is all set to put extra burden on the shoulders of the public, as around Rs120 million will be spent on the launching ceremony of Metro Bus service. According to sources, the government has given approval to release more than Rs70 million from the National Treasury of Pakistan. Whereas it has also decided that approximately Rs120 million taxpayers’ money would be spend on the launching ceremony of Metro Bus project.” (April 29, 2014)

I am positive that there must be some misunderstanding, Mr Prime Minister. You cannot possibly allow this while cutting down on profits from widows like me? And that’s not all to this confusion, sir. Another newspaper pointed towards suspension of service of these pretty red buses in Lahore. Haw Haey! The paper writes, “In the recent past the city Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) and the Lahore Development Authority have written in detail to the office of the chief executive of the province requesting funding for the rehabilitation and expansion of the city sanitation system as well as upgrading the underground drainage system, but to no avail. On the other hand, schemes such as the Metro Bus project — which was completed in just 11 months — were pushed ahead at the expense of properly maintaining the essential water and waste management infrastructure, which is not as attractive vote-wise as is the Metro Bus system.” (September 6, 2014)

Dear Mr Prime Minister, I am sure this must not be so. How can your government under your able tutelage commit so much to a project whereas the profits given to widows like me are carefully calculated and cut down without calculating what needs to be done?

There is another ‘high priority’ project I am reading about. “The government has decided to allocate over Rs250 billion for infrastructure sector including energy and transport in budget 2015-16 that would have an overall Rs600bn development outlay.” Though I understand the CPEC project requires a lot of infrastructure but, Mr Prime Minister, does it have to be done at the cost of us widows?

A business newspaper talking to people of NSS writes, “They said the pensioners/elderly people and widows are being paid monthly profit of Rs940 on investment of each Rs100,000 against the earlier rate of Rs1280. Any further cut in the interest rate would make their lives more miserable…. They said that the government had already substantially cut the profits in February 2015 for specialised savings schemes — Behbood Savings Certificates and Pensioners’ Benefit Account — when the SBP decreased the discount rate by one percent.” (March 27, 2015) The paper goes on to write, “In September alone, the amount of savings in a number of schemes under the NSS clocked up at Rs15 billion. However, a manager of an NSS branch told this scribe that investment in NSS has decreased after 1.5 percent drop in the interest rate during the past two months.”

The paper hits the bull’s eye in one sentence though, “While the vulnerable small investors like pensioners/senior citizens and widows were finding it difficult to manage their households…” That is the key word: ‘vulnerable’. Who are the vulnerable in a society? Dear Mr Prime Minister, I am positive, you must have heard of David Mechanic and Jennifer Tanner. In case you have not, dear Mr Prime Minister, a possibility as you have been so involved in matters of running the state, David Mechanic is the director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research and the René Dubos Professor of Behavioural Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick. Jennifer Tanner is a postdoctoral trainee at the institute, whereas Jennifer Tanner is supported by a National Institutes of Health National Service Award (5 T32 MH16242) from the National Institute of Mental Health. The para quoted below is from their joint essay published:

‘Vulnerability, the susceptibility to harm, results from an interaction between the resources available to individuals and communities and the life challenges they face. Vulnerability results from developmental problems, personal incapacities, disadvantaged social status, inadequacy of interpersonal networks and supports, degraded neighbourhoods and environments, and the complex interactions of these factors over the life course. The priority given to varying vulnerabilities, or their neglect, reflects social values. Vulnerability may arise from individual, community, or larger population challenges and requires different types of policy interventions—from social and economic development of neighbourhoods and communities, and educational and income policies, to individual medical interventions.’

It reminded me of verses just sent to me on WhatsApp by a friend as I sat penning this piece, and I share them with you:

‘Yeh halat ho gayee khalq-e-Khuda ki,

Keh mehengayee kay hathoan mar rahee hai,

Nirali hai maeeshat bhi hamaree,

Keh yeh phir bhi taraqee kar rahee hai.’

(Anwer Masood)

Mr Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,

I request you on behalf of all widows to appreciate that single women also need to make both ends meet. Government policies must be friendly towards the vulnerable sections of the society. I am positive you will agree.

Kindly revise the rate of profit, upwards, for Behbood Scheme.

Thank you,

A widow