CJP seeks report on Zamung Kor affairs

PESHAWAR: Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar has asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary to submit a report after he received an application which had sought a judicial inquiry into the alleged misuse of funds and wrongdoings in the affairs of Zamung Kor, an institution that aims at rehabilitating the street children.

Zamung Kor (Our Home) for street children in Peshawar, established by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led KP government in November 2015, is dedicated to rehabilitating street children in a dignified manner.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan took notice of the application filed by Dr Altaf Qadir Khattak, a consultant urological surgeon, submitted through the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court.

“Take notice in pursuance of an order of the Chief Justice of Pakistan in the application and you are required to submit a report regarding questions raised in the application before January 21,” the director, Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court, told the chief secretary through a letter on January 7.

Currently, over 130 street children are admitted to the institution and its capacity is up to 1,000.

Dr Altaf Qadir Khattak, a consultant urological surgeon, submitted the application with the chief justice of Pakistan, requesting him to order a judicial inquiry as he claimed that the political interference and misuse of funds were affecting the public welfare project.

“I started working for the rehabilitation of the garbage collecting street children of Pakistan in May 2012. The first centre, with 50 children picked from the garbage dumps of Peshawar, became functional in August 2012. Now we have almost 1,000 children under our care in Child Protection Centres across Pakistan in all the provinces of the country,” the applicant stated.

The KP Assembly then passed a bill of ZamungKor giving it a grant of Rs500 million for the first year to start with. The amount was gradually increased to Rs2 billion. He pointed out that recently due to political interference, things started going wrong in the institution.

The applicant clubbed press cuttings with the application about the resignation of Major (retd) Harris Khan Khattak from the post of director of ZamungKor in August 2017 and levelling of corruption allegations against the institution’s board of governors (BoG), which the institution rebutted.

Following the allegations and problems of mismanagement coming to surface, it said, the director general (DG) Department of Monitoring and Development (M&D) was asked by the KP government to investigate the matter.

Unfortunately, it said, the DG M&D could only go to the same management and the same BoG of ZamungKor under whose supervision everything was happening.

He requested the court to appoint a judge of the Supreme Court to look into the affairs of ZamungKor and the BoG be dissolved immediately with an interim setup put in its place while the investigation is running.

Information about a total number of children at the institution, progress report about children condition, dropout rate and joining of the children, criteria for recruitment of children, annual budget and salaries of staff, about the privilege of BoGs and audit of the funds have also been sought by the applicant.