Community Dialogue in Flood Affected District: Raising Awareness Against Corruption and Improving Climate Governance Accountability
Community Dialogue in Flood Affected District: Raising Awareness Against Corruption and Improving Climate Governance Accountability
Venue: Tehsil Rojhan District Rajanpur Punjab
Day & Date: Monday, 18 September 2023
Transparency Intentional Pakistan organized a Community Dialogue in flood affected district to raise awareness against corruption among the marginalized communities to enhance citizen’s participation in climate decision-making and advocate for improved climate governance accountability. The open dialogue took place on 18th September 2023 at Rojhan, a flood affected area of District Rajanpur, Punjab. Around 45 participants belonging to different communities attended the dialogue. The District Administration representative also participated in the Dialogue and addressed the questions of community members.
The community dialogue formally started with recitation of Holy Quran. After which a round of introduction was carried out. Mr. Hanif Darishak, President, Youth Development Organization (YDO) Rajanpur. He welcomed the participants and emphasized on the importance of community dialogue to highlight problems of local communities, which are severely affected by flood situation every year.
Next, Mr. Toufique Wassan, Project Coordinator, Tl Pakistan shared the objectives of the community dialogue and thanked district administration representative for his presence to address the questions of flood affected communities. He further shared the interventions of TI Pakistan related to climate governance in the country. He highlighted that it is important to engage stakeholder’s mainly local communities in climate action.
During the talk, Mr. Wassan also shared about Punjab Climate Change Policy 2017. He said that there is need to establish a vigilance committee that can ensure the effective and efficient implementation of Climate change related projects with the consultation of youth, Women, Persons with Disabilities and Transgender communities. The vigilance Committees must be autonomous and responsible to ensure the budget transparency and accountability mechanisms from planning phase to the completion of every project. He said the communities must monitor the Climate related projects and their implementation at grass root level.
He invited participants for an interactive and experience sharing discussion during flood situation which caused heavy damages as well as lose of livelihood, agricultural crops and share experiences of humanitarian assistance received from provincial and federal government.
Mrs. Nasreen Bibi, a community participant from slum area of Tehsil Rojhan said during 2022 floods, her 2 sons were severely affected due to water born diseases and she was unable to access medical treatment, she lost her younger son at Relief camp.
Mr. Sher Muhammad, another community representative said that they are extremely vulnerable as their area is not in the priority list of Provincial government, firstly the water of Indus river affected their crops and the remaining losses happened due to the flash flood water coming from Dera Ghazi Khan mountains, most of the population is dependent on agricultural crops as there is no other source for their Livelihood. The Government paid the compensation to the land lords only but the survival of a farmer was not addressed at any level. There is no any policy through which a farmer can get crop insurance to feed his/her family in case of an emergency situation during disasters.
Another community participant, Mrs. Noor Jahan shared that during the floods, her house was completely damaged and her only source of livelihood, the two cows also suffered. Another participant Mr. Hidayatullah shared that the relief material was provided to the favorite people of local political leaders and the funds were utilized in those areas which were not severely affected, they went to the deputy commissioner office as well but no one took the notice against their complaints. He further said that the schools were also affected due to flood situation and there are some buildings which need repair and renovation but no one is taking notice on these basic problems in their area. Most of the schools were used as Relief Camp for Flood affected families due to this it was difficult to resume educational activities. There is a need to allocate an alternate place to facilitate the communities during any emergency situation.
Afterwards, Mr. Samiullah Khan Mazari Representative of District Administration thanked TI – Pakistan for organizing community dialogue to addressed the queries and questions raised by the community members. He said most of the relief operation was done by the local administration due to heavy flood situation they were also unable to reach everywhere he said there were some problems and concerns of affected communities about the distribution of relief material and rehabilitation phase also. The district administration has requested the Provincial Government to for the provision of funds to rehabilitate the damaged educational institutions and we are hopeful that we will ensure the rehabilitation as high priority task. The housing survey was conducted across the district and we are also working on it to rebuild/renovate the fully and partially damaged houses. In the end he requested TI Pakistan and Youth Development Organization (YDO) to advocate for the crop insurance as they can get some benefit to survive.
Mr. Wassan discussed about the Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre of TI Pakistan, he said TI Pakistan always encourage the communities to identify and report the corrupt practices at grass root level to our ALAC we will write to the relevant officials to take notice and address the complaints of citizens, He further said that this is dire need to educate the local communities on climate change mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and social accountability tools to enhance their effective participation in climate decision making and empower communities with the skills so they can identify and report environmental corruption.
Afterwards Mr. Toufique Wassan discussed about the Right to Information laws through which they can hold government accountable by filling RTI requests and demand public information about utilization of floods aid.
Mr. Wassan while talking about RTI law said that it is an important law which supports local governance through community engagement. He told participants that every citizen has right to information, and it allows the citizens access to public information. He briefly explained about RTI application process, functions from local level to provincial information commission.
Mr. Wassan shared about mechanism of information commission to deal with a compliant. He said the RTI is powerful tool in term of social accountability tool to improve public service delivery and this can be beneficial for climate governance at local level to engage citizens in transparent decision making in their community.
At the end Mr. Hanif Darishak President Youth Development Organization (YDO) Rajanpur concluded the dialogue by thanking TI Pakistan, District administration and the participants from different villages for their participation.
