Direct Payments to Pakistan's Flood Victims: A Smart Option for U.S. Assistance (The Hill, Congress Blog)
From the article:
Pakistan clearly has an urgent need for swift, effective aid in the wake of its catastrophic summer of floods. Infrastructure has suffered unprecedented damage, and as many as 1.6 million households, mostly rural, have lost their homes and possessions. Beyond relief efforts to provide urgent needs—food, water, medical care, and temporary shelter—the priority of the Pakistani government and its international partners will be helping those directly affected get back on their feet and rebuild their lives. What is the best way to help? Even before the floods, spending aid money well in Pakistan was not going to be easy. In 2009, Congress pledged $7.5 billion in non-military aid over five years, but only a tiny fraction of that money has been disbursed. Finding channels (either inside or outside the Pakistani government) where the United States could be confident that dysfunction and corruption would not siphon away too much of the aid has been a challenge. That challenge is still present in the context of the flood reconstruction effort.
However, a new approach has the ability to leapfrog over these impediments. Pakistan has launched a system to provide direct payments to two million flood-affected households to pay for them to rebuild their homes and replace lost property. The system uses machine-readable smartcards called Watan Cards that use modern biometric technology to ensure a unique identity for each recipient and reduce fraud. The cards are issued by major banks, meaning that recipients can receive cash from existing networks of local agents as well as branch offices. The program is scaling up rapidly, with nearly one million cards issued in the last 45 days.
