For the last seven years, Amanullah Dayo had been part of a project on tuberculosis (TB) control of the Sindh Rural Support Organisation (SRSO) in Sukkur. “I built my life around this work,” says Dayo, who was serving as a coordinator until the project was abruptly halted. “Over 135 employees lost their jobs overnight,” Dayo tells Eos.

Mohammad Dittal Kalhoro, the executive director of SRSO, says they were forced to shut down “all three of their US-funded health initiatives.” It included the one on TB, another on climate-smart agriculture, valued at $24 million, and the third on building healthy families — part of an $86 million nationwide project, called the Integrated Health Systems Strengthening and Service Delivery Initiative.

Further south in the small town of Matiari, four out of eight projects on domestic violence, run by the Legal Aid Society, had to be put on hold, says Muhammad Asif, who works as a protection officer. A vocational training project for women in Mirpurkhas met the same fate, as did another on community mobilisation in Umerkot.

At the other end of the country, in the merged tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a project to improve governance and administrative systems valued at $40 million has also been halted. Another one, for the rehabilitation of Mangla Dam, valued at $150 million, went the same way.

Pakistan’s humanitarian workers spent years preaching resilience to vulnerable communities. But when the US pulled the plug on their fundings, they discovered their own sector had none…

In each instance, the shutting down of the project resulted in dismissals, including mass layoffs such as the one carried out by SRSO.

“Three years of work experience, various trainings and........

© Dawn (Magazines)