138,000 families along LoC to receive Ehsaas cash handouts

Ag APP

MUZAFFARABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has taken his signature Ehsaas financial assistance programme to Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), where more than 138,000 families living along the Line of Control (LoC) will benefit from the cash handout scheme.

At the Prime Minister’s directives, around 138,275 families of 219 villages living along the LoC are entitled for the emergency cash assistance. The families will receive a monthly stipend of Rs2,000 as well as an emergency cash payment of Rs 12,000 to be given to the women of the said households.

The relief has been granted to the families as they live under a constant risk of unprovoked firing by Indian occupation forces and had suffered the losses of both lives and properties. During the past six months, India committed 1,440 ceasefire violations, martyring 13 people and leaving another 104 seriously injured. The government has allocated Rs3 billion for the said families.

Addressing a ceremony in connection with the programme in Muzaffarabad on Friday, Khan also announced 1.2 million people in AJK will receive health cards through which they can get medical treatment from any hospital up to one million rupees, Radio Pakistan reported.

Khan said: “Disease in any house puts the entire family into trouble and health insurance can make the life of a person easier.”

The Prime Minister said the government had decided to provide health cards to the entire population of AJK as well as the merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Referring to International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Khan said the Indian “extremist government of Narendra Modi has intensified its atrocities on people of occupied Kashmir”. “The use of pellet guns, abduction of youth, mass graves and other heinous crimes are increasing.”

The Premier said torture and other atrocities on the innocent people of occupied Kashmir are being perpetrated in a “systematic way”. “The hands of Narendra Modi are stained with the blood of Muslims in India. The current government is following the ideology of RSS that was inspired from the violent and racist ideology of Nazism.”

Prime Minister Khan also expressed his apprehension of a possible genocide of Kashmiri Muslims carried out by India. “The Hindutva mentality of Indian government considers minorities as low class and inferior people. This thinking will ultimately lead to the destruction of India,” he added.

Khan said he, as an ambassador of Kashmir, has been highlighting the plight of Kashmiris at all international forums. He added that during his meetings with world leaders and governments, he effectively raised the issue of the dangers posed by current Indian regime.

This year, August 5 will be marked in a befitting manner with the determination that India will not be allowed to succeed in its designs, the Prime Minister announced. “India cannot crush the will of freedom of Kashmiris,” he added.

Despite tough financial situation due to Covid-19, the government had increased the budgets for AJK, Gilgit-Baltistan and the merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In a tweet earlier in the day, Khan tweeted: “Today on International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, I call on the international community to hold India accountable for its human rights abuses in IOJK where women, men and children have faced pellet guns, sexual assault, electrocution, and physical and mental torture.”

He said the atrocities by Indian occupation forces were well documented by the United Nations, human rights organisations as well as international media. “A continuing silence in the face of such blatant abuse is against international human rights and humanitarian laws and must be unacceptable,” the Prime Minister wrote.