RAWALPINDI, July 2: The poor women of Rawalpindi city have been deprived of their share of dowry assistance as the Punjab Auqaf department has failed to distribute Rs2.4 million funds because the prescribed Zonal Jahaiz Committee could not be constituted during the last four years, Dawn has learnt.

It was decided in 2003 by the then provincial chief administrator that zonal Jahaiz committees would be set up in all the nine zones of the Punjab. It was planned to utilise the income from donated properties under Waqf Properties Ordinance 1979 to give Rs600,000 annually to the needy women for dowry. In all other zones such committees had been constituted since then but the needy women of Rawalpindi zone kept on waiting for the last four years to get the results of this favourable decision.

In four years, Rs2.4 million had lapsed due to apathy of the district’s Auqaf administration, which failed even to propose the names for the committee that would look for the needy people.

It was in May this year that the Punjab chief administrator approved the committee after nominations were sent. The committee started its work and gathered the information about 10 prospective recipients of the money. Every woman was to be given Rs50,000.

The committee met for the first time on June 29 and was told that the funds could not be distributed among the needy women because during the registration process the names of many members of the committee were either wrongly written or misspelled. Due to this clerical mistake, the amount could not be transferred to the committee as its account was not opened. With the inception of new fiscal year in July, the funds for 2006-07 had also gone wasted.

The vice-chairperson of the committee, Farhat Naz, expressing anger over the lapse of funds said it was an injustice to the already beleaguered poor and needy women.