ISLAMABAD: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senator Nisar Muhammad has urged the need for immediate announcement of a financial package for victims of terrorist attacks, including seven sisters and their only brother, who had lost their parents in an act of terrorism.
He welcomed the metro bus and orange train projects and the scheme of distribution of free laptops among students in Punjab, but pleaded for allocation of funds for survivors of terrorists’ frenzy. “Sometimes, I feel totally as a senator not being able to do anything for these affectees of terrorism,” he remarked.
“It is the prime responsibility of the state to look after these hapless people. Either you abide by the Constitution or put it aside,” he said, referring to operative articles in the Constitution about the state’s responsibilities towards its citizens.
Senator Nisar has written letters to both the prime minister as well as the Ministry of Finance to consider financial help of these victims and that the process must be made transparent through a mechanism.
“I myself know several families, who are solely dependent on whatever support is given to them by their relatives or neighbours. But unfortunately, majority of these is also now finding it hard to continue feeding them,” he pointed out.
Senator Nisar, who is from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, emphasised that a team of impartial persons should be assigned the task of preparing data of such persons, desperately in need of assistance to survive after they lost their elders or bread-earners.
He singled out Malakand, Charsadda and Peshawar as the cases in point, where many did not even have money to buy coffins for the terror victims. The senator also made mention of a young boy, who has been left alone by the terror monster to look after his seven sisters, following the tragic death of their parents many months back.
“You and we forget the ones, who have survived terrorist attacks or feed them and meet their other essential needs,” he said and wondered why Article 5 of the Constitution was not being followed.
He decried the position so far taken by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the federal government with regards to the terror victims and asked was the blood of the martyred also divided between the Centre and its federating units.
The PML-N senator pointed out that unlike the government of Pakistan, the government in war-ravaged Afghanistan, which had so many serious issues to handle, had established a separate ministry for the look after of those, who suffer from acts of terrorism one way or the other.