When Aid Fails The People
Asem Mustafa Awan
Islamabad: In the contrasting chaos of Karachi and Islamabad, two women – one seated in searing sun to hawk household goods, the other crouched in filth rummaging through refuse – symbolize the real cost of a nation’s economic unraveling.
The woman in Karachi’s Korangi, elbow-deep in garbage, fends off cats, dogs, and disease with bare hands in her daily struggle not for food, but for survival.
Hundreds of miles away in Islamabad’s Peshawar Morr, another woman sits quietly under a makeshift umbrella in the blistering heat, offering hand fans, synthetic scarves, and plastic slippers to passersby who barely glance her way. She waits. Not for customers, but for hope.
These aren’t just two women. They are metaphors for Pakistan’s commoners — voiceless, invisible, and conveniently forgotten.
Their presence is jarring, their resilience uncelebrated. And yet, the world watches Pakistan through the polished lenses of conferences, summits, and donor pledges, blissfully unaware that the aid meant to uplift these very souls rarely reaches them.
Read More: https://thepenpk.com/when-the-law-becomes-optional/
Pakistan’s external debt stands at a staggering $130 billion (as per IMF and World Bank estimates, 2024), and every citizen — including these two women — effectively owes over PKR 300,000 in external liabilities. That’s their burden, despite never having signed a single loan agreement or benefitted from any grand development scheme.
According to the World Bank, Pakistan continues to depend on external financing to plug fiscal deficits, with annual debt servicing consuming over 40% of government revenues.
Funds routinely flow in from the IMF, World Bank, ADB, and UN-backed development initiatives — yet these resources rarely trickle down to the street vendor or the scavenger.
Instead, they get absorbed into layers of bureaucracy, inflated contracts, and infrastructure dubbed “white elephants” by the very donors that once financed them.
International agencies have raised flags — the UNDP’s 2023 Human Development Report explicitly warned that “Pakistan’s development indicators risk collapse without systemic reform,” citing corruption, poor governance, and lack of investment in people as primary hurdles.
So where does that leave the common Pakistani? Somewhere between discarded promises and garbage heaps.
Read More: https://thepenpk.com/education-on-the-edge/
These women — weathered by life but undefeated — exist at the margins of a society where “poverty alleviation” is a catchphrase, not a commitment. Their lives are not punctuated by policy wins or economic recovery signs. They measure their days in plastic bags, loose coins, and moments of shade.
It’s telling that the state, perpetually reliant on international goodwill, continues to let its people survive rather than live. That institutions built for public welfare have become echo chambers of bureaucracy. And that the women in these photos — emblematic of millions — remain both undocumented and unprotected.
There is no pension for them. No health card. No social security net. Their dignity is not just on hold — it’s been stolen by decades of economic mismanagement, feudal politics, and indifference that borders on cruelty.
To those in power, these women are statistics. But in reality, they are the truth — raw, undeniable, and human.
They deserve not pity, but dignity. They deserve to be heard.
So the next time donor funds are pledged, project plaques are unveiled, and politicians celebrate bailouts, someone must hold up these two photographs and ask — “Did the help reach her?”
Because if it didn’t, maybe the system doesn’t need more money.
It needs a soul.
Photo Credit: APP
The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.
Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.
