Human rights revolving fund may lapse this year

Though the government has established a revolving fund aimed at providing urgent relief in hardships and deserving cases of human rights violations, including; kidnappings, rapes, police encounters, arrests of women, extra-judicial killings and tortures yet not a single penny has not been spent and this fund is likely to lapse this year.
A number of people attached with the ruling party had applied for compensation/ financial assistance but they have been declared non-deserving. Sources said that due to lack of publicity deserving people could not apply.
The sources said that like last year, the Human Rights Revolving Fund might be returned to the Finance Division, as the majority of the applications received by the ministry did not 'meet the criteria'.
Only those people were applying for financial assistance whose kinsmen had earlier applied for it, and, as such, they were not entitled to receive the financial assistance, the sources said.
The sources, however, said that this year, too, most of the applicants had sought relief for medical care, marriages of sons and daughters and for addressing their hunger and poverty.
"This is only due to lack of publicity on the part of the ministry, as the deserving people were not aware of the fund, which ultimately lapsed," the sources said.
During the course of audit carried out in 2003-04 and 2004-05, it was noticed that the management had made an expenditure of Rs1,799,345 from the funds against the laid-down objective and disbursement procedure.
According to the list of disbursement of financial assistance provided by the management relating to 2003-04, the entire financial assistance from the revolving fund was given to beneficiaries belonging to the constituency of the law minister. In 2004-05, out of the 485 beneficiaries, 305 belonged to only one district ie Faisalabad.
One senior bureaucrat of the ministry had made headlines in May 2006 when she was reported to have opposed Law Minister Wasi Zafar on the disbursement of a major chunk of the ministry's human rights funds to applicants from the minister's home constituency.
Meanwhile, an official told that should they fail to receive applications from deserving people, the remaining funds of Rs1.9 million could lapse next month.