Sindh families deprived of ration despite release of funds

KARACHI: The deserving families in Sindh were deprived of ration despite released of over Rs1 billion funds to the deputy commissioners 20 days ago by the provincial authorities, citing sources, ARY News reported on Sunday.

Sources told ARY News that deputy commissioners of different cities have been handed over more than Rs1 billion funds by the Sindh government, however, needy people have not received the essential commodities so far.

On the other hand, citizens of different districts have complained for getting sub-standard products and ration in less quantity while the deserving families in Karachi, Jamshoro, Hyderabad and other districts were facing serious difficulties amid COVID-19 lockdown situation.

The special cell established by the Sindh government has also received hundreds of complaints for not receiving ration and also expressed outrage of distribution of essential goods only among voters in different villages.

Read: Rs22.46 billion disbursed among over 1.77 million deserving families: SAPM

Despite making many claims for emergency steps for the citizens, it emerged that the Sindh government has handed over only 40 ration bags to the chairmen of some union councils (UCs).

UC chairmen from Karachi’s West, East and Central districts revealed that the average number of persons of around 200 houses is 50,000 in each UC but the provincial authorities were dispatching only 40 ration bags.

The current situation of relief activities was exposed at the time when citizens witnessed low pace of coronavirus screening tests across the province despite the emergence of new cases on a daily basis.

Earlier in the day, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah announced that 93 new cases of coronavirus surfaced in the province during the past 24 hours.

Read: Virus hotspots in Karachi’s district South to be sealed: DC

In a statement, CM Murad Ali Shah said that 569 new tests were conducted today and 93 of them turned to be positive.

He said, “So far, 13,309 tests have been conducted for the COVID-19 and 1411 of them turned to be positive.”

The chief minister said that 389 of the diagnosed patients recovered and discharged from the hospitals. CM Murad said that 30 people have died from novel coronavirus across the province so far.

According to the national dashboard, the total count of coronavirus cases reached 5,170 across Pakistan and death toll jumped to 88. Sindh has the second highest figure of virus cases up to 1,411 after Punjab with 2,464 patients.