UNDP, JICS and the Government of Pakistan sign a Cost-Sharing Agreement for Monitoring Products being Supplied under Drought 2000 Relief Program

Today, on 29 June, 2001, a Cost-Sharing Agreement was signed between the United Nations Development Programme, Japanese International Cooperation System and the Cabinet Division, Government of Pakistan for monitoring of Relief Products being supplied under the Japanese Grant Aid for Emergency Program of Drought 2000.

The provinces of Balochistan and Sindh were severely affected by a drought during the year 2000, which led to a significant loss of livestock and crops in addition to deterioration of health and sanitary conditions of drought affectees. The Government of Pakistan, assisted by various UN agencies, NGOs and donor countries, launched a programme to provide relief and rehabilitation to the drought affected people of these provinces. The government of Japan, considering the seriousness of the situation, also provided 481 Million Japanese Yen to the Government of Pakistan for the procurement of relief products and incidental services for Balochistan and Sindh Provinces. The products are intended to provide relief in the following four sectors:

· Public Health
· Water Supply
· Livestock
· Transportation

In Sindh province, the relief goods will be distributed in Dadu, Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar and Sanghar districts as well as Nara Canal area. These goods will be distributed to the Health and the Livestock & Fisheries Departments, Government of Sindh.

In Balochistan Province, the goods will be handed over to the Balochistan Relief Commissionerate for distribution in the drought affected areas.

In order to ensure proper distribution of the relief goods to the people and their proper utilization, UNDP shall monitor delivery of the goods from arrival at port to the places of distribution to the concerned parties. The monitoring services will be provided for a period of ten months from August, 2001 to May, 2002. Under this agreement the services to be provided by UNDP are as follows:

> To check the arrival of goods and quantity referring to the shipping documents.
> To collect the distribution plans for the Goods from the end users or the person in charge at the sites.
> To check whether the received Goods are in conformity with the contracted goods.
> To check whether there is any quality or quantity problem with the received goods.
> To check the inventory of the received Goods with the copy of Certificate of Receipts and the distribution plan.
> To check whether final relief operations place actually received the correct quantity of the Goods as stipulated in the distribution plans.
> To check how the Goods are used at the relief operations place for the affected people.
> To collect the general information concerning final relief operations place.
> To take photographs of the inventory of Goods at the sites and relief operations place.
> To collect any data, references, and maps concerning the progress of relief operation.
> To hear any comments on the benefits brought by the Goods and any other information which helps evaluating the donation of the Goods by the Government of Japan.

A Monitoring Team comprising of a Team Leader, a Programme Assistant and two Monitoring Officers (one each for Sindh and Balochistan) will be fielded to undertake this task and regularly provide information to JICS and Emergency Relief Cell, Government of Pakistan.

The amount received under this Cost-Sharing Agreement is being added to the budget of UNDP supported Drought Relief Assistance Project PAK/00/003. Apart from meeting obligations of the agreement with JICS, the monitoring team would also help to report regularly on the current status of the drought situation in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.