Khawaja Zaheer Ahmed - PDMA

Minister’s Relief Fund was not seen as healthy. He presented his
mixed bag of findings from responses obtained from flood affectees
in Thatta/Badin in Sindh and Muzaffargarh in the Punjab that
revealed varying perceptions and reactions regarding degrees of
effectiveness of different departments, officials and non-official
agencies and existence of corruption, the sole exception was the
Punjab Health Department that scored 10/10 for its work in the
affected areas and the case was used to infer that affectees
awareness about ground realities was not superfluous. He strongly
pleaded for early restoration of elected local governments as its
absence had contributed towards compounding of people’s
miseries. Analysis of 112 articles published in various national
dailies on the issue of flood losses that attributed most of the
responsibility to Government’s failure to forecast and take timely
precautions that further aggravated poorer ‘Human Development
Index’ (HDI) in poorest districts of southern Punjab. The research
conducted by M/s Jamal Khan Toor and Malik of PIDE in its
Pakistan Development Review, Issue No.42/2 Summer 2003:
‘Mapping the Special Deprivation in Pakistan’ established
deprivation among poorer southern Punjab districts like
Muzaffargarh, Layyha and D.G.Khan were at the top, was cited as
these were the worst hit districts. He sounded a caution: Unless
remedial steps were taken without delay, hunger strike or long-
march to Islamabad may be planned by the affectees, as a last
resort.
k. Khanzada Ameer Masood, an affectee/property owner from D.I.
Khan deposed to highlight his predicament of failing to receive
compensation as a case of observed anomaly: He is a permanent
resident of South Waziristan, who remained employed with a state-
owned utility in Karachi, till his recent retirement, but maintains a
house in the vicinity of Gomal University DI Khan in KP. He was
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