PESHAWAR - The Alkhidmat Foundation is planning to open four more orphan care centres in Mardan, Swat, Swabi and Charsadda districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Three orphanage centres have already been working in Peshawar, DI Khan and Mansehra districts, where at least 241 orphans are presently getting free shelter, food, education and health services, Alkhidmat Foundation KP Chapter President Khalid Waqas said this while exclusively talking to The Nation on Sunday.
Not only this, library, computer labs, study tours and extra curriculum activities had been ensured to them at these centres. Quoting the UNICEF, he informed that “there are about 4 million orphans in Pakistan.” Of them, at least 5 lac are in KP mainly lacking education, food and other basic facilities.
Sensing the situation, Alkhidmat Foundation will open several more Aghosh centres in KP. Two under-construction orphanages in Kohat and Lower Dir districts are ready to start functioning in February 2019. In future, we plan to setup such centres in the newly merged districts like Bajaur, Mohmand, South and North Wazisirtan, he stated.
He went on to say that, “Our orphan care centre in district DI Khan having 95 children now is in a rented building. We need someone donating from 10 to 15 kanals of land in DI Khan to setup the same centre in its own building.
Only in Peshawar based Aghosh centre, we have about 100 orphans providing them free education, books food and other basic needs. Some of them are shining students, who have now been enrolled in Islamia College and Edwards College Peshawar in FSc classes, Khalid Waqas explained.
In the same breath, he said that they also run another programme for ‘street children’ by initiating evening classes for them and also assisting their families financially. “We have so far seven such centres for street children. One each in Lower Dir, Mardan, Kohat and four in Peshawar district,” he said adding that each centre has at least 50 children enrolled.
In fact, street children do not get formal education while going to workplaces. Because, the street children are mainly breadwinners for their families like those working in hotels and workshops etc, the Alkhidmat Foundation KP president said.
It is hard enough to convince such families in order to send their kids to the centre for education, but we have succeeded to a great extent. In addition, we get enrolled street children at government schools, if they want to continue studies.
Established in 1990, Alkhidmat Foundation is totally different than other welfare organisations by serving people simultaneously in eight different sectors including health, education, natural disaster, clean drinking water, caring for orphans and street children, providing interest-free loans and community services, Khalid Waqas went on to say.
To cope with man-made or natural disasters, the foundation has setup well-equipped disaster management cell with some 7,300 volunteers, of them 3,000 got trained in first-aid along with 94 ambulances in KP only. Sharing figures, he said that “some 364 explosions were reported from 2007 to 2016 in Peshawar. And, our volunteers served from the front, I will say they served from core of their hearts.”
Waqas said that they were planning to setup a state-of-the art disaster management centre in Peshawar. In this connection, some three years ago, district government Peshawar had conferred 12 marla land for the proposed centre, but unfortunately, the local government department seems less interested and uses delaying tactics now.
In heath sector, the foundation also runs at least 26 health facilities in the name of Alkhidmat Hospital in KP. In near future, three more similar hospitals will be opened in Bajaur, Mohmand and Buner districts. Having a similar hospital in Mardan, a local has allotted some 27 kanals land on Swabi-Mardan Road, and this hospital will be named as Mashal Hoti Medical Complex instead of Alkhidmat Hospital, which will be made functional by March 2019. In Peshawar based hospital, we have also setup a free blood transfusion centre for Thalassemia patients. Presently, at least 200 Thalassemia patients have been enrolled with this centre.
In education sector, at least 31 education institutions are working under the supervision of the foundation, where more than 7,366 students both boys and girls are acquiring quality education, he said.
Giving details about ‘Muwakhat,’ an Islamic microfinance scheme, Khalid Waqas said that it aimed at empowering poor and low income people to make their lives better by providing them interest-free loans from Rs100,000 to Rs50, 000. “We run this program now in seven districts of the province,” he said.
Under community service programme, we distribute free wheelchairs, dowry, food packages and help in releasing those who are in prisons for being unable to pay little amount in petty cases. According to the WHO, more than 250,000 children below five years of ages die because of polluted water in Pakistan every year. In this regard, we run clean drinking water awareness programme, besides install water filtration plants and community water pumps in remote areas of the province by spending a huge amount, Khalid Waqas concluded.