LAHORE: Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi on Thursday released Rs12.20bn for relief of more than 55,000 flood victims, which would be given as Rs280,000 each to the owners of 47,500 mud houses and Rs400,000 each to the owners of 8,000 concrete houses.

Addressing the ceremony of distributing relief funds, he said valuable work had been done by the armed forces, Akhuwat and other religious NGOs for the victims of the flood.

“I went to different areas of DG Khan to assess the situation and found thousands of houses, mosques and schools washed away.”

Mr Elahi commended the efforts of the officers who lent a helping hand and noted that Sania Nishtar developed a wonderful distribution system in two months. He termed the transparency of the aid programme unprecedented as the record was available on the PDMA system.

The CM said the Ehsaas program was Imran Khan’s plant, which was going to become a tree. Three times more stipends would be given than before to the girl students of south Punjab. “Imran Khan and I did a telethon together and we got ideal funds. No other person tried to do so as they knew that the public would not give them anything. Imran Khan has a cheque of Rs1bn for Sindh but they have not conducted the survey yet. It could be siphoned off if the aid money is given to Sindh. I don’t know how many days I have in power but I will continue serving the people,” Mr Elahi said.

Dr Sania Nishtar said preventing corruption in the Ehsaas programme was the biggest challenge. In the past, social protection data was compiled on a political basis while now the curse of nepotism and political bias had been eliminated from the data entry as the record of every payment would be recorded through CCTV, she added.

Chief Secretary Abdullah Sumbal also spoke.

The CM formally launched the programme and distributed relief funds among the victims of Taunsa, Jampur, Kot Chhata, Rajanpur, and Rojhan at the special BoP counter.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2022