Recommendations for suitable measures to MercyCorps for emergency food assistance program : designed for flood victims in Pakistan

Abstract

Food is the first and foremost priority for the people especially flood affectees because they can get shelter and camps by the government and other parties and move to dry places but basic priority would be food, without which survival is impossible. When flood strikes, then affectees of that particular area move to other cities so at that time they require emergency assistance. In 2014, MercyCorps distributed rice bags on emergency basis but proper procurement as not conducted. Rice bags were expensive and weren’t distributed among people properly. Later; when audit was carried out by kpmg it was realized that fraud and mishandling was done while carrying out the project. The main reason for the failure of the project was the absence of project plan, that from where they have to procure the rice bags and to whom they have to distribute in which ways. MercyCorps is trying to help victims of flood in Punjab because it’s been badly affected by flood for past 2 years. Due to shortage of time, we have chosen only district Jhung because it would be easy to focus on one district rather than all. Another reason for choosing Jhung is that, data was available and can be collected easily. We had coordination with DC Jhung district which made data collection easier for us. The victims of flood complained that they were poorly treated by the government agencies and other private donors who were helping them in this disastrous situation. Due to short time period, we have considered this research on data collection, to identify flood victims need and how to distribute rashan properly; how to stabilize them through cross sectional design. For interviews, sample size was only team members of DC Jhung and worker of NGO. or questionnaires; closed ended; the population of MercyCorps employees, HR manager, semi government employees, government employees, private employees, non-service, business man was considered. In Jhung, food was not distributed properly and maximum support given by government was 1 month. Rashan provided to them was of very less quantity but it was not enough to stabilize people. After data collection and deep analysis, different methods were provided to distribute rashan to the flood victims of district Jhung. And different steps were recommended for the survival of flood victims; among which stability step was foremost; as this was not seen in other NGOs. Proper plan has been made for this purpose along with suitable measures; so that for the future MercyCorps can perform better in providing emergency food assistance to flood victims of district Jhung. And if they face any difficulty in this plan; than they can make changes accordingly in a better way.