ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel on Tuesday expressed dismay over the pathetic performance of provincial disaster management authorities (PDMAs) despite all available resources at their disposal in dealing with challenges in wake of monsoon floods in the country.

The Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, which met here with Kishwer Zahra in the chair, regretted the PDMAs have proved to be a complete disappointment as they miserably failed to do what they were supposed to do to facilitate the flood victims.

The committee said that the federal government spared all its resources; however, the relief could not reach the flood-affected people.

With this, the panel decided to call heads of PDMAs in its next meeting to discuss the negligence on their part.

A member administration PDMA apprised the committee about the relief and rehabilitation activity carried out in the flood-affected areas.

He said that 32 districts in Balochistan, 17 districts in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, three in Punjab, and nine and five districts in Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, were declared calamity hit.

As per information gathered through the PDMAs, GBDMA, and AJ&KDMA, 1,739 people died, whereas, 12,876 people were reported injured.

Apprising the committee about the damages caused to public infrastructure, private property and livestock, the member NDMA said that 13,115km of roads and 439 bridges were damaged, whereas, 2,048,789 houses were damaged partially or fully.

He further informed that joint surveys for damage assessment for calculation of financial impact of the losses were in progress and would be completed soon. He said that after the data compilation the government would announce rehabilitation packages.

The representative of the Finance Division apprised the committee that Rs18 billion had been released to the NDMA besides disbursal of Rs70 billion to flood affected through the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

He further said that Kissan Package comprising 16 different components has been approved by the ECC and would be announced after ratification by the Federal Cabinet.

The member NDMA assured the committee that post audit of all the expenditure would be shared with the Committee on conclusion of the operation.

The committee members expressed scepticism over the performance of PDMAs, saying public representatives, especially in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa said that they were not taken on board besides relief could not reach the affected people.

They suggested calling the provincial disaster management authorities to answer the queries of the committee members.

The committee approved, “The Civil Servants (Amendment) Bill, 2021” and “The Oil and Gas Regulatory authority (Amendment) Bill, 2022” as proposed by the government after in-depth discussion.

It was apprised that the OGRA bill aimed to introduce measures to attract foreign investment in the establishment of LNG terminals.

The committee after the briefing on institutional reforms said that restructuring of government entities, civil service reforms, improving governance and reducing wastage of public money was imperative.

The committee stressed for the continuation of the institutional reforms in national interest.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022