A Rope, A Tire — And the State?
Investigative Report by: Malik Zubair Awan
This is the land where every calamity that descends from the heavens finds man trembling in its wake. This is the same soil where, year after year, the state lights torches of budgetary promises — trillions of rupees, allocated for progress, for protection, for the people. And yet, when the skies roar, the rivers swell, the earth quakes — the state arrives not with relief or resolve, but with nothing more than a rope and a floating tire in its hands.
Is this truly the state built on a 7 trillion rupee budget? Or is it a grotesque portrait of corruption, incompetence, and chronic indifference that we’ve grown too accustomed to ignoring?
Between 2018 and 2025, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government approved budgets amounting to more than 7 to 8 trillion rupees. These included dedicated funds for disaster management, healthcare, infrastructure, and social welfare. Yet on the ground, the story is devastatingly different. When calamity strikes, the machinery of the state creaks and groans — and all it musters at the people’s doorstep is a rubber tube and a few feet of rope.
In 2018–19, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) received 5.2 billion rupees. By 2020–21, that number had soared to 49.1 billion. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), on the federal level, engaged in satellite monitoring, international aid coordination, and emergency health logistics. But the provincial distribution of funds remained stagnant — blocked in district offices or misused with alarming regularity.
The 2023 Upper Kohistan scandal shook the system to its core: a 40-billion-rupee fraud involving fake contracts, thousands of forged checks, and dozens of ghost bank accounts. NAB and the Auditor General’s reports from 2023–24 uncovered irregularities amounting to 152.1 billion rupees — which surged to over 200 billion the following year. These included ghost procurements, fictitious expenditures, and unpaid state revenues. These were the very funds meant for flood victims, earthquake survivors, and infrastructure repair.
The health sector tells a similar tale of decay. Sources confirm that between 2024 and 2025, irregularities worth 1.9 to 3.1 billion rupees were reported in the procurement of substandard medicines and medical equipment. The damage wasn’t just financial — it endangered lives.
NDMA’s Early Warning System, supported by 277 satellites, issued alerts in time. But what use are warnings when tents, food, and medicine never reach those in danger? Clearly, the failure lies not in the skies but on the ground — in the broken link between federal planning and provincial execution.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government presented a 1.33 trillion rupee budget in 2023–24, and 1.654 trillion in 2024–25. Of this, 2.5 billion was allocated for emergencies and disaster recovery. Yet implementation remained a question mark. In April 2024, 500 million rupees were announced for rain victims, and 3.5 billion was distributed among 17,000 families in North Waziristan — 20,000 rupees per family. Still, many continue to cry out for aid that never came.
The Peshawar BRT project consumed over 168 billion rupees — yet it, too, is marred by allegations of mismanagement, shady contracts, and flawed planning. When the state shows up with press releases and photo ops during disasters but fails to deliver relief, can we still call it a state?
NDMA tries to function with strength and structure. But if provincial departments fail to implement its plans on the ground, the entire system collapses. What we need is a transparent, automated coordination mechanism between NDMA, PDMA, and district authorities — one where every rupee, every project, and every check is traceable and publicly visible. Every account, every procurement, every contract should be digitized, leaving no room for ghost contractors or corrupt officials.
And we, the people, must end our silence. We must demand answers. When a state with a 7 trillion rupee budget leaves its citizens clinging to ropes and tires, who is to blame? The minister who signed the budget? The officer who issued the checks? Or we — the citizens — who never asked for accountability?
A true state stands beside its people in their darkest hours. It shelters them, heals them, and mourns with them. Not one that reads budgets like poetry, poses for the cameras, and then disappears into silence.
If we don’t awaken now — the next storm will come, and the state will arrive again… with nothing but a rope and a tire.
