Flood Relief Work Updates: Khairpur District – hosting largest number of displaced people after Karachi

Updates of 20th August 2010

We reached Khairpur city in Khairpur district around 12:30 pm and went straight to SRSO’s Hub Office. Khairpur district (not city) was hosting the largest number of displaced people after Karachi. We met with Regional Program Manager (RPM) there and after initial introduction we briefed them about our purpose of visit. Because, Salat ul Juma (Friday Prayers) was close, we agreed to resume our talk soon after that. We went to Jama Masjid of Khairpur and after offering prayers, went straight back to the office. We asked RPM to brief us about their organization reach, structure, projects they are currently engaged in and capacity they have to execute such projects. They informed us that they are currently executing following projects with assistance from International NGOs

WFP assistance
17,000 Households to be assisted
75kg Wheat flour per family
4.5kg Cooking Oil per family
2.25kg High Energy Biscuits per family
UNICEF assistance
Installation of Pit Latrines and Water Hand Pumps

More projects can be found on their website.

We then inquired about their project execution process, to which they replied that they have two different teams for each of the projects:

Assessment Team – is responsible for assessment of families/people. They visit different areas/locations identified either by the government or local people or any other source. They visit people on ground, assess their basic needs and fill them on a Ration Card which contains both information about that family and the items which they need. This Ration Card has two copies, the assessment team hand over one copy to the family/person with their assessment officer signature and date and keep the other with themselves. When they reach their office, they use that copy to update their central database and to form lists for the distribution team.
Distribution Team – is responsible to distribute aid items to assessed families/people. They normally follow assessment teams after a day or two. They ask the Ration Card from assessed family/person and on the basis of recommendations inscribed on the card, they distribute those items to them and signed the cards to make sure that distribution has been completed.

On our request, they took us to the field and we visited several camps setup in school and colleges and we also observe their assessment and distribution teams while they were working on the ground. We also visited some of the largest concentration in the Kacha area and on the Bachao band near Pir Jo Goth several kilometers away from the main land. Map trails and directions are as follows:

We came back to the Hub Office and break our fast there. After having visited the fields and having discussions with people on ground, we came to the conclusion that the phase one (feeding people with cooked food) is over and they are moving towards phase two (providing ration) of the relief work. And there’s a hurdle in between. There were a considerable amount of people who bring nothing along themselves while evacuating from their home locations. They didn’t have basic cooking utensils and they can not cook or have means to serve food to their families. If we are planning to move on to phase two, we must cater those families on urgent basis. Similarly, we need to fulfill following initial requirements (listing on the basis of priority):