Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has constituted a four-member committee to take care of daily wagers and other deserving persons during the on-going lockdown in Sindh, to provide them financial assistance or ration.
The CM Sindh took this decision in a meeting of welfare organizations to work out a joint plan to support the daily wagers and other deserving persons who have lost their bread earning resources during the on-going lock down across Sindh, said a spokesperson to the CM’s House on Tuesday.
The four-member committee will be headed by Energy Minister Imtiaz Shaikh. The other members of the committee include Special Assistants to CM Waqar Mehdi, Rashid Rabbani and CM Coordinator on Social Sector Haris Gazdar The committee in consultation with welfare organizations would take final decision how to assist the affected people whether with ration or with cash or both. Speaking on the occasion Syed Murad Ali Shah said that he has called Imtiaz Shaikh back fromShikarpur to support him here in the war against COVID-19. The meeting was attended by Faisal Edhi of Edhi Trust, Ramzan Chippa, Shahzad Roi of nae Zindagi, Shakil Dehlvi of Alamgir Trust, Zafar Abbas of JDC Foundation, Sousif Lakhani of Saylani Welfare, Qazi Sadaruddin of Al-Khidmat Foundation, Hanif Motlani of Memon Federation and others. The chief minister was assisted by provincial ministers Imtiaz Shaikh, Nasir Shah, Saeed Ghani (on video Link), Adviser Law Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, IG Sindh Mushtaq Maher, Home Secretary Usman Chachar and Salman Shah of PDMA. The chief minister said that he was worried about the daily wagers and for those who earn their bread and butter by setting up make shift type of burger, fries, and chaat stalls. “I want to support them for which a mechanism needs to be evolved,” he said.
The chief minister discussed the mechanism of distribution of ration and disbursement of funds among the needy people with each and every head of welfare organization. Most of them said that the people should be provided ration for 15 days while some were of the view that the distribution of ration was quite difficult job and again people gather around the vehicle carrying the ration. Some of the participants advised the chief minister to distribute cash among the deserving people so that they could purchase their groceries etc as per their requirement. It was also informed the participants of the meeting that the Zakat department has already developed a mechanism to distribute Guzara allowance among 200,000 deserving persons. It was also informed that the government has already designed a mobile application service on which people in need of ration could be able to send messages. If the application is approved then a four-digit helpline number would be advertised for the information of the people where they can send their messages. The chief minister directed the committee chairman Imtiaz Shaikh to prepare his recommendation within next two days so that public could be supported in a shortest time.
The chief minister has released over Rs 314 million to the divisional administrations for onward distribution among the district administration. The amount would be spent on administrative work, and other expenditures being incurred on the care of pilgrims coming from different areas.
