|
|
|
| November 2, 2005 | Wednesday | Ramzan 28, 1426 |
Relief agencies perform disappearing act
ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: Scores of ‘relief camps’ which had sprung up in Rawalpindi and Islamabad in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake are disappearing fast. And that too at a time when international aid agencies have been stressing that relief must continue to reach the survivors during the winter to avoid a “second wave” of tragedy.
Nearly 100 roadside camps were seen collecting donations in cash and kind for the millions of people devastated by the killer quake in the second week of October. Now only a few are visible.
“It seems the ‘business season’ is over for them,” a renowned figure in social services told Dawn requesting anonymity.
Most of the roadside relief camps were set up by humanitarian NGOs which collected millions in donations from international and other agencies in the name of facilitating quake victims were not observed carrying their relief packages to the quake-hit areas, he said.
“I claim they had filled their own pockets by exploiting the emotions of people in the tragic situation. Out of the 90 relief camps set up in the twin cities, I saw just 15 agencies handing out relief goods among the people of Bagh,” the social worker said.
“Some charitable trusts were observed active for the time. Others sprang up overnight. They frequently invited state ministers to their camps and bases and begged the government officials to register their trusts,” he disclosed.
According to a cursory survey conducted by this reporter about 20 relief camps, most of them “all year trusts” are running their offices at present while those seen very active in the early days have folded their tents and vanished.
“Why would they function now? They are done with the business and are well aware of donor fatigue, so they have closed their offices,” a volunteer working in one of the dubious camps told this reporter on telephone.
“I joined the NGO on voluntary basis with the aim to help the victims but the fund being generated in the camp was neither taken to the affected areas nor handed over to another agency doing the work,” the volunteer remarked.
He said he came to know about the nature of the NGO when its head urged the state minister who visited his camp for the registration of his office.
Most of the dubious relief camps persuaded the kind hearted to donate cash as relief goods were difficult to transport.
An international aid agency official told Dawn that local NGOs were not seen distributing cash money among the quake affected people of NWFP and Azad Kashmir. “It was a big blunder by so-called humanitarian NGOs collecting cash money in the name of quake victims who could not buy anything with it as all the markets had been destroyed.”
Common people, though still generous, have also become suspicious of the newly born humanitarian agencies.
A worker in the Edhi International told Dawn that the main reason behind the disappearance of relief camps was that generous people had started inquiring about the legal and social status of the organisations collecting donations.
However, some organisations had to stop operations because quake victims won’t accept cast away clothes, shawls and other commodities donated to them.
|
|
|
|
