PESHAWAR: Displaced people of the Malakand region are selling relief goods to pay for their routine expenses.

Each of the displaced families having seven members has been receiving 40kg wheat flour, 5kg sugar, 10kg rice, 5kg pulses, 5kg ghee, four soaps and 1kg dry milk per month from the government since May 13.

According to the UN estimates, 87 per cent of the internally displaced persons live with host communities in schools, hospitals and houses and, so, were being provided food by their hosts. Therefore, they receive relief goods, but sell the same in local markets to pay for other expenses.

‘We sell the relief items because my mother is suffering from diabetes and she needs regular medication. We are not getting medicines from anyone,’ said Gul Rahim, 38, a labour from Saidu Sharif now living in a school in Par Hoti, Mardan, along with his wife, three children and mother.

He conceded that he was selling the relief goods to local shopkeepers at throwaway prices but said he had to purchase medicines for his ailing mother for which he had no other option.

‘I receive the stuff every month and make Rs3,000 from its sale. This month, I bought a pedestal fan and a gas cylinder for cooking,’ said 21-year-old Javed Ali from Ambela in Buner.

Ali, residing in the Government Primary School, Hirawand, Rustam, said he was able to buy new clothes for his three small sisters from the money generated from the sale of goods.

Mohammad Idrees Khan, nazim of the Rustam Union Council where an estimated 30,000 IDPs from Buner and Swat have taken refuge, told Dawn that the displaced people had been getting a lot of relief goods at the start of the conflict, but now they were entirely dependent on the aid given by the government.

‘All of them have run out of cash money due to which they sell whatever they get to pay for their other expenses, such as haircut, shaving and buying drugs,’ he says.

He said most of the IDPs had bought anti-mosquito spray and bed nets. Local shopkeepers are the beneficiaries, who buy the relief items from the IDPs at half the original price.

‘We buy Rs50kg of wheat flour from the IDPs at Rs700. This benefits us as well as IDPs,’ said Jaffar Khan, a shopkeeper in Rustam.
 
Jamil Rehman of Kabal, Swat, said he purchased books and notebooks for his two children from the money he received from the sale of wheat and ghee last month. ‘Next month, I will buy clothes and some other things for my wife and children,’ he said.

A mason by profession and now staying in a tent on the Mardan-Buner road, Mr Jamil said he never sought alms, but now he had no choice but to receive aid and sell it in the market to be able to buy other essential things.

‘We used to hand out alms, now it’s our turn to receive aid to cope with this harsher situation,’ he added.

Jawad Ali of Buner, living in a Rustam-based school along with his 10-member family, said they had no place to store the relief items. The only choice, he said, was to sell the items and get cash.