Posted on 08/13/2010 3:20:38 PM PDT by Schnucki
More than £300 million in foreign aid for victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake has been diverted by President Asif Zardari's government to other causes, officials have told The Daily Telegraph.
They now fear that the alleged diversion of funds will deter donors from giving further aid after the country's devastating floods.
According to senior officials, schools, hospitals, houses and roads planned with money given by foreign governments and international aid groups remain unbuilt almost five years after the earthquake which killed 80,000 and left four million people homeless.
International donors gave £3.5 billion to rebuild vast swaths of Pakistan's Kashmir and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces after the earthquake destroyed the region's infrastructure.
However, senior Pakistani officials yesterday said more than £300 million given in aid has yet to be handed over to the country's Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA).
Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's opposition leader, last night said suspicion among potential donors was hampering the fund-raising effort to help more than 14 million people displaced by the floods which have swept away buildings, bridges and roads in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab provinces.
"There's reluctance, even people in this country are not giving generously into this flood fund because they're not too sure the money will be spent honestly," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Zardari has already been criticised for his handing of the floods after failing to cancel his foreign trip, which included a meeting with David Cameron at Chequers, despite scale of the disaster. So far 14 million people need help and 1,600 have died, making it the world's worst humanitarian disaster, according to the UN.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Go figure.
Gee, that sounds like the New York State government using road, Thruway and gasoline taxes for other than their intended, stated purposes.
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