Govt, donors agree on six-point plan: Reconstruction, rehabilitation of quake victims
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Nov 18: Pakistan and the international donors’ community have agreed to adopt a broad six-point strategy to ensure that benefits of reconstruction and recovery effort reach every affected person of the Oct 8 earthquake. The strategy has been jointly prepared by the government and leading donor agencies.
These lessons demonstrate that while rescue and relief operations can be relatively quick to mobilize, the process of converting financial commitments into effective action is marked by unanticipated delays, unrealized expectations and denial of rights unless they are aligned with local governing arrangements and legally mandated and functioning local authorities.
The first principle of the strategy is that it should be people centred in which, whenever possible, affected people should receive flexible external support to assess their own needs, make arrangements for shelter and restore their livelihoods.
Special institutional and legal arrangements would be made to protect vulnerable groups such as orphans, women and missing people from abduction and trafficking. Identities and entitlements would be protected through a well-placed system to secure lost records of revenue, property, death, birth, banking, police, judiciary and state and community land.
Subsequently, a strategy would be formulated for transition from the relief to recovery phases, from military to civilian control, and from short-term executive controls to legally sanctioned, locally elected leadership.
Secondly, subsidiarity and restoration of responsibility to legally mandated institutions is important for speed, relevance and accountability of recovery operations. While centralizing the strategic planning of the recovery strategy, the responsibility for all other executive functions would be returned to the lowest level of mandated and competent authority. The government will announce commitments and implement protocols for responsibility and reporting at all levels of the recovery operation.
Third, district and central strategic coordination and accountability would be accorded high priority. Special purpose district arrangements would be made to facilitate coordination between army and civilian agencies and civil society during restoration of accountability of the local administration to elected representatives.
To ensure central and provincial strategic accountability, clear assignment of responsibilities would be made at the national and province levels for cross sectoral policy coordination; multi-agency coordination; information clearing house on responses; documenting government and donor commitments; and monitoring compliance with agreements. Donor engagement would be tailored according to sector features, the scale of the damage, and the donors’ comparative advantages and capacity to respond.
Fourth, competing demands would be managed through technical and policy choices that improve the speed of recovery responses.
Fifth, umbrella approvals would be sought for multiple standard works and responses that could facilitate large scale contracting and common protocols for key steps. Because local capacity has to be augmented, the government would make explicit the expected increase in responsibilities and assist with the review of annual development plans, the development of schemes and the preparation of protocols at the provincial and district levels.
Sixth, the accountability and enforcement of standards would be based on functioning administrative dispute resolution systems and full extension of supreme audit institutions, backed by functioning judiciary and legal institutions.
A common donor, government and civil society commitment to zero tolerance for corruption would be backed by full extension of the Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) jurisdiction to all agencies involved in recovery operations and third party verification of contracts.
