14 March 2004	Sunday	22 Muharram 1425

KARACHI, March 13: The Overseas Pakistanis Foundation is trying to locate around 350 affectees of the Kuwait crisis, whose compensation of over $5 million had arrived a long time back, said an official.

OPF official Mushtaq Ahmad said that there were around 30 cases of people, who also had not been paid the compensation amount, as the real victims had died over the years and their heirs were in the process of getting succession certificates from the courts.

He said that the passports of majority of these 350 missing victims either carried addresses of various hotels in Lyari, or they belonged to remote areas in the interior of Sindh and Balochistan.

Nearly 44,498 Pakistani victims, who had sustained losses owing to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in early 1990s, had submitted their claims through the OPF with the United Nations Compensation Commission.

Mr Ahmad said that so far 43,920 claims had been approved by the UNCC and over 308 million dollars had been received by the OPF so far. Out of this amount, around 303 million dollars had been disbursed among 43,540 victims, he added.

He said that the OPF received the compensation amount in dollars while the victims, after being duly verified by the OPF staff, were paid equivalent amount in rupees.

Giving a category-wise break up of the disbursement, he said that over $125 million had been paid to over 32,348 victims in category "A", in which up to $8,000 were paid to each victim.

He said that for the 46 claims made under category "B", according to which the victims had either died or had become ill, a total amount of $240,000 was paid.

Under category "C", over 11,042 victims had submitted their claims, he said. They were paid around $150 million. Some 95 victims in category "D" were paid nine million dollars, and the seven victims placed claims in category "E" had been paid $1.4 million.

He said that over $16.5million was paid to the federal government on its largest claim.

The official urged the Kuwait victims, who had submitted their claims with the OPF and later forgot, to contact the OPF offices and see if their claims had been approved and the funds had arrived. He said that they might be among those 350 missing people, whose compensation had arrived, but were not being located by the OPF.