PESHAWAR: Fata Disaster Management Authority (FDMA) is establishing Grievance Redressal Mechanism (GRM) to redress the grievances of hundreds of displaced families of North Waziristan Agency by ascertaining reasons for rejection of their cases by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).

Officials said that FDMA had initially registered 90,039 displaced families from the troubled area and the data was sent to Nadra for verification. The authority after scrutiny verified 52,986 families as genuine and rejected 37,053 cases owing to duplication or invalid number of the Computerised National Identity Cards.

They said that grievances’ desks would be set up in Bannu and other IDPs hosted areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to review the rejected cases and provide quick relief to the affected families. Nadra has rejected thousands of cases during the verification process.

Vulnerable groups especially widows have been facing problems in getting registration cards because of non-availability of their identity cards. The local people have set up action committee to help widows and other affected people, who have yet to get registration cards.

Total eight grievances desks including four at the World Food Programme’s distribution hubs in Bannu would be set up to address the complaints of the displaced families. Staff of the FDMA, UNHCR and implementing partners would be deputed at these desks.

Officials said that data of 37,053 claimants was required to be addressed through a robust GRM. They said that FDMA also tried on its own to redress grievance of 11,227 displaced families, who had provided invalid Computerised National Identity Cards numbers by manually checking the original registration data.

After scrutiny by FDMA confirmed data of 5,190 families and sent it to Nadra again for validation process. The remaining 6,037 were being processed to provide relief to genuine displaced families.

FDMA would share final database of the rejected cases with protection cluster and proper guidelines would be developed for the awareness of displaced families. FDMA will also contact rejected cases through SMS on the SIMs of the cellular company, which is transferring cash assistance to affected families.

UNHCR will expand the number of grievances desks and also the number of staffers, who will be equipped with the database of rejected cases and procedural guidance note. It has been proposed that all grievances desks will be jointly attended by UNHCR, implementing partners and FDMA staff for its accountability.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2014