Controversy over membership of relief package committees

MARDAN: Controversy has been generated here due to complaints that the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has nominated party activists in the committees set up to identify daily wagers and other deserving persons for paying them the government’s relief amount of Rs5,000 per family.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had announced 5,000 as relief for each deserving family. The sources said that in this connection, Deputy Commissioner Mardan Mohammad Abid Wazir had established five-member committees at union council and village council levels for the identification of daily wagers and other deserving people who lost livelihoods due to the lockdown to tackle the Covid-19 situation. The committee should ideally have included the secretary of union or village council, a schoolteacher, two elders and members of local Zakat committee. The sources said that in the beginning, the deputy commissioner nominated the village council secretaries to collect data and distribute the relief package at the village council level. They were asked to nominate 150 deserving households, but this annoyed the leadership of PTI. The sources said the PTI lawmakers opposed the plan and gave the names of their favourites to the deputy commissioner for inclusion in the committees. The deputy commissioner later included PTI members in the committees tasked to identify the deserving persons so that they could be paid the amount.