JEDDAH: Members of leading welfare organizations have called on charities to increase their aid to the stranded Pakistanis, while deploring the deteriorating conditions in the camps in Bangladesh.

“There are 13,000 NGOs working in Bangladesh but hardly five NGOs work for stranded Pakistanis in the camps. This is very tragic,” Anwar Khan Akmal, founder and CEO of US-based welfare group OBAT Helpers, said during a symposium at the Shaheen Restaurant in Jeddah recently.

The symposium, titled “Stranded Pakistanis and role of Welfare Organizations,” was organized by the Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC). He said OBAT has established several schools, health care centers and offered loans for self-empowerment (microfinance) that has helped hundreds of family to become self-sufficient and also provide jobs to others.

Syed Nesar Ahmed, founder and CEO of Pakistan-based Muslim Welfare and Development Organization (MWDO), appreciated the assistance coming from donors in Saudi Arabia but appealed for more. “The stranded Pakistanis are living in a very pathetic condition in the camps,” he said, adding that in Ramadan he expected people to donate their zakah and sadaqa to them generously.

Other speakers emphasized the need to reactivate the Rabita Trust (frozen in October 2001) and restart the process of repatriation and rehabilitation of the stranded Pakistanis. To overcome the paucity of fund, they called for the implementation of the PRC proposal of “settlement of stranded Pakistanis on self-finance basis.”

PRC Convener Ehsanul Haque praised IDB for sending 10,000 carcasses each year to stranded Pakistanis while calling on the OIC to include in its agenda the issue of settlement of stranded Pakistanis.