Pakistan: Poor suffer as cash crunch hits charity projects

Business Desk :
With Pakistan in dire straits due to loan delays by international financial institutions, its charity sector is particularly hard hit by cash shortages.
Ghazi Khan has resumed sleeping on the street as authorities have closed down shelters in Quetta, the capital city of the southwestern Balochistan province.
Until recently, the 61-year-old manual worker, whose wife, only son and grandchildren live away in his native Mastung area, used to spend nights at the Spinny Road Panahgah (shelter home) and eat at the adjacent Langar Khana (soup kitchen).
However, that is no longer the case.
“I work at the vegetable market to load goods onto trucks and earn paltry sums daily, so [renting a] room is out of the question. [Former Prime Minister Imran] Khan gave homeless people like me the roof [Panahgahs] to sleep under at night but the current government snatched it from us and therefore, we all are back in the open to nap and sleep,” he told Deutsche Welle.
The Panahgah closures in the city also forced Parveen Bibi, a 55-year-old Afghan widow, onto the street again.
She said she used to spend the night in the Saryab Road Panahgah but now slept either at the main bus terminal or at the nearby railway station, and depended on cash handouts for survival.
Projects, jobs at risk
Currently, Pakistan is embroiled in a serious financial crisis caused by a long delay in the $1.1 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Other major lenders of the world, too, have promised loans but linked their release with the signing of the IMF deal, which, to many, is not in sight.
The local industry has suffered badly from the rupee’s massive devaluation and import hurdles, while 36.6% inflation, the highest in the country’s history, has caused a squeeze on people’s income.
Both public and private sector organizations complain they don’t have enough to cover expenses, a threat to the ongoing projects as well as the jobs of staff members.
Government under fire from opposition Former prime minister Imran Khan’s administration put up Panahgahs and Langar Khanas across the country with the help of private hunger relief organizations.
However, those in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan provinces were closed down lately with the semi-autonomous Pakistan Baitul Mal (PBM), which oversees the initiative, citing the unavailability of funds as the reason. All workers except guards were also laid off.
Sania Nishtar from the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party and former PM Khan’s aide on poverty alleviation claimed that 80% of shelter homes and soup kitchens had wounded up operations in provinces other than KP and Balochistan, while the rest had reduced their activities to almost zero. Khan, too, blasted his successor Shehbaz Sharif over the closure of shelter homes and promised to reopen them if or when he returns to power.
In a tweet a day before May 1 International Workers Day, Kahn said: “I felt humbled when I visited a Panahgah – laborers being served a meal with dignity & sleeping in warm beds rather than on footpaths in bitter cold. In inhumane acts, govt has now closed most Panahgahs & targeted health card scheme too. We [PTI] will reopen Panahgahs immed[iately] on being reelected.”