Fighting the floods, eight weeks on

Excerpt:

The flooding in Pakistan this July has created a situation that still perplexes the government and the NGOs engaged in helping millions of displaced people.

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Fayyaz also worries about the looting of relief goods by mobs and their siphoning off to political allies. “That’s where you need to have community networks on the pattern of what we have in Gilgit-Baltistan,” says Fazl Karim, a social worker associated with the Aga Khan Foundation.

Karim says they were able to resolve the problem of distribution on political grounds when the aid agencies coordinated with the Aga Khan Development Network, an umbrella organisation that oversees local support organisations at the union council level.

Karen Brown, an international trustee with ActionAid, says they could improve relief work by developing community networks and creating a board of trustees in Pakistan along the lines seen in India. She acknowledges that with wider networks of private organisations and local NGOs comes the need for ensuring transparency and accountability.

via http://thesamosa.co.uk/index.php/blogs.