MEMBERS of the Senate Committee on Human Rights were justifiably astounded to learn that the Sindh government has spent over Rs10.3bn in Thar over the last three years on programmes to support food, health and general relief, simply because the results are nowhere to be seen for such a large sum of money.

Take the claim that Rs4.2bn worth of wheat was distributed free of cost throughout the district.

The Thar Commission’s report that had been issued only a few days earlier, says “there is no evidence that all the poor people who deserve this service have got the wheat”.

Additionally, the commission notes the growing role of contractors in the distribution of wheat, and anomalies in the number of recipients.

And then there is this line: “The wheat was distributed without assessment of who is poor and affected and who is not. Even the richest persons got the wheat (sometimes more than the poor).”

They concluded that “in the commission’s view, the wheat distribution was less a relief and more of a scam”.

Similar assessments are there for other areas where the Rs10.3bn has supposedly been spent.

For example, despite Rs2bn spent to increase health coverage, almost 40pc of the population of the district is still not served by any government health machinery, according to the Thar Commission report.

A programme for general relief and rehabilitation was allotted Rs1.8bn over the same period; yet the commission identified “gaps in government relief efforts as prime factors behind the crisis in Tharparkar”.

One such gap is evident in a programme on feed support for livestock, described by the commission as “a waste of government resources”, because the feed is of such poor quality that it “has no impact” and much of it is siphoned off from the bags by the time it reaches the beneficiaries.

The mismatch between resources and outcomes in Thar shows that racketeering and other weaknesses of the state machinery bear a large responsibility for the dismal situation in the district.

And this after the present provincial government has been in power for almost eight years now. The PPP prides itself as the party that empowered the provincial government through the 18th Amendment and the NFC award.

Yet, more than half a decade later, we are still waiting for the party to live up to its own promise of bringing governance closer to the people.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2016