It has been two years since the Citizen Damaged Compensation Program was launched by the Government but it failed to produce any substantial changes in the lives of the affected families of flood 2010 rather it added another chapter of sufferings when finally the program was launched.

During the first launch of the program a lot of people lost their precious lives while waiting in long queues but on its second launch, a lot of home work was done and different international consultants were engaged to formulate the program because this time the World Bank, USAID, DEFID & the Government of Italy were major stakeholders who financed for CDCP programme to provide compensation to those beneficiaries whose houses were partially or fully damaged by the flood, and for its smooth implementation of the programme different international NGOs like International Organisation for Migration (IOM), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and UNHCR were engaged in order to maximise beneficiary facilitation and to ensure the transparent implementation of programme according the operational guidelines set mutually with the government. But very little attention was paid to the matter related to the beneficiaries.

It was envisaged that this time previous mistakes will not be repeated and this time the CDCP program will be implemented with greater transparency and real beneficiaries will have optimum benefit of the programme but all in vain.

People enjoying political and bureaucratic support had no problem in receiving the card but other beneficiaries who had no support found themselves in chaos and confusion though they were declared eligible.

On the other hand no arrangement for drinking water, shelter for waiting, no separate queue for women and neither any facility was provided to the physically handicapped people.

However, people who finally succeeded in getting the watan card had a tough time withdrawing the amount from ATM machines.

Many have lost their watan cards or have paid thousands of rupees to withdraw the amount.

Most of the beneficiaries were dealing with ATM machines for the first time.

Government and the international community should have carried out an awareness campaign which could create awareness related access to ATM machines.

Initiatives should have been taken to run a campaign on financial literacy. In this way the beneficiaries should have been better informed to make use of the amount.

For the last two years, the situation is more or less the same for the CDCP beneficiaries and the government and the implementing organisation seemed not interested in paying attention.

The international community has a strong mechanism to watch the intervention accordingly so that desired results are obtained.

AMJAD ALI SURHIO Dadu