Pakistan, Sindh

Appeal to Overseas Sindhis for Advocacy to International Governments for Aid and Fair Distribution to all Provinces

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by Khalid Hashmani, McLean, Virginia, USA

As of today, more than 250 million dollar has been pledged by International governments and communities to help the flood victims in Pakistan. It is great that many overseas Sindhis and Pakistanis have been generously donating through their favorite charities and organizing distribution of food and other essential items in the affected areas. However, equally important task is to make sure that the world communities will not only increase their commitments but also ensure fair distribution of aid to all provinces with full accountability to minimize leakage due to corruption.

The following are some of my recommendation for maximizing the affect of your efforts:

1. Pursue international governments to donate more funds by approaching all decision makers and decision influencers. Urge them to specifically allocate by each affected province and require the Pakistani government government to ensure fair distribution of all aid to all provinces.

2. Ask International governments to demand transparency in the distribution of the aid and require set-up of an effective accountability system that will track where and how the money is spent and those responsible for distribution are held accountable for each cent.

3. Research the background of organizations that you considering to donate. Select the one that have impeccable reputation and credentials for honesty, effectiveness, and willingness to to be open and share full details on how they managed donated funds.

4. Monitor the international and local NGOs to whom you donate and ask them to provide full accountability of all donations they received. Find out who are the key people behind those organizations and whether they are trust worthy. Ask them to give daily reports about where and how they aided the flood victims. Ask such organizations to give regular and periodic reports of their activities and ask a relative or friend in Sindh to visit the affected areas and talk to people to verify the reports by those organizations.

August 20, 2010

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