The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) came under fire in the federal cabinet meeting on Wednesday with most of the ministers criticising the failure of the authority to handle the distribution of goods among the flood victims. The ministers said the NDMA officials could not handle the distribution process, triggering ugly scenes of brawl among the people, resulting in media critique and damage to the aid.
A source in the cabinet told Pakistan Today that Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan expressed concern over the NDMA staff’s failure to handle the problem, and was later joined by Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who said the NDMA staff needed proper training to handle such situations. “Most of the ministers approved the points raised by the ministers with SAFRON Minister Engineer Shaukatullah suggesting that the NDMA staff should be trained by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa PDMA, who were better trained and had successfully dealt with the handling of such situation while dealing with the IDPs,” the source said. He quoted Water and Power Minister Naveed Qamar as telling the meeting that the provincial government had failed in properly informing donor institutions what had happened this year.
“The international community has been grilling Pakistan for not learning its lesson from the previous year’s floods while the truth is that last year the floods had wreaked havoc due to chocking of rivers and canals. While we were strengthening the river dykes, this year the disaster struck due to extraordinary monsoon rains. Moreover, encroachers had occupied canal sides which resulted in chocking of the sewerage system causing more flooding,” the source quoted the minister.Gilani directed the minister to get all encroachments along side the canal banks to be cleared. According to the source, Cabinet Secretary Nargis Sethi defended the NDMA, saying the government had $570 million of the previous year’s aid which could be reverted to the flood victims of Sindh. However, it could not be done because the Sindh government had failed in providing data of the aid given to the victims under the Watan Card scheme last year.The source said the prime minister directed the MPs from Sindh to provide the data to the federal government. He said during the meeting, State Minister Sheikh Waqas Akram raised his objection to the verification process of electoral rolls, accusing the Punjab government of nepotism. He quoted the minister as telling the meeting that since the process was being completed by school teachers, he had doubts that the Punjab government was not sending the teachers to those areas where the parliamentarians belonging to the PPP and the PML-Q had won elections. However, the source said, the premier consoled the minister, asking him to consult Khurshid Shah, who was in charge of the campaign. The prime minister also assured Akram that the deadline would be extended if it lapsed.Another important decision taken by the cabinet was the approval of changing the base year of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which was to be made after five years but this time it was changed after a lapse of 10 years.
It was also decided that the members of the federal cabinet would donate one month’s salary to the PM’s flood relief fund. Earlier, the PM said he had cancelled his visit to the US because he could not see his people in misery.
