profitable work through surety bonds so that after getting released they would set up some business and used their profits to repay the loan.
The previous government had also raised some funds for the prisoners, but the procedure remained stuck in the ministry concerned and no soft loans were provided to the prisoners.
In September 2011, the federal government urged the provincial governments to help raise the “Diyat” and “Arsh” and “Daman” funds from the existing Rs35 million to Rs65 million to help the convicts who had already completed their imprisonment. However, the provincial governments failed to reply positively to the federal government’s request.
Since then no progress has been made to establish the fund for the prisoners. Just the summary was moved to the ministry concerned but the issue remained on paper only.On December 14, 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Diyat (blood money) laws were not against the Constitution or Islam, but that the government should provide prisoners with jobs and soft loans to enable them to pay their fines.
Noor Alam Khan, the chairman of the Voice of Prisoners (VoP), a non-governmental organization, told The News that the previous PPP-led federal government had taken some initiatives for allocating funds for the prisoners, but nothing materialized.
He suggested that both the provincial and federal governments should do legislation or make provision for the needed funds through administrative orders and help secure the release of hundreds of prisoners and also reduce the burden on the government exchequer. He said that currently 403 prisoners since years are imprisoned all over the country because they cannot pay the blood-money to get out of prisons.
As per the Prisons Department report, these prisoners belong to poor families. An official of the department said he was making efforts to collect funds from the philanthropists to enable the prisoners to pay the money and gain freedom.