If you have been paying attention to the news, there’s a chance you have heard of the floods going on in Pakistan.
Torrential downpours from the start of monsoon season have caused the water levels to rise, resulting in massive amounts of damage and entire villages being swept away. Currently, it is estimated that more than 20 million people have been left homeless.
If I may be blunt, we cannot and must not send another cent to Pakistan in the form of disaster relief.
Before gathering your tar and feathers to come after me, let me explain before you call me a heartless monster. Afterward, feel free.
Obviously, I can see the issue of my living in Louisiana and claiming we can’t send money to disaster-hit countries. However, what I am saying is not the absolute stopping of aid, but just how it is done.
Additionally, I’m sure some of you are sick of hearing about Hurricane Katrina every single time New Orleans in brought up in the news, and with yesterday being the fifth anniversary, I’ll try not to add too much more to the Katrina talk.
Instead of simply sending money, whether directly or through non-government organizations, I propose we send specialists, equipment or the proper foodstuffs. The result of this would be cutting out the middle man and spending the money ourselves instead of entrusting it to someone else.
This view may just be cynical and distrusting, but if we look at some of the past foreign relief efforts, we can see our previous methods might not be worthwhile, especially with the economy in such a crappy situation.
Take Haiti for example.
In the months following the earthquake that devastated the country, our government sent more than $379 million to help, yet only a penny out of every dollar went to the Haitian government.
Personally, I think this is a great idea and something we should definitely implement in our Pakistan relief, as well. The aspect I take issue with in the Haitian relief effort, however, is how the rest of the money was distributed.
A lot of the U.S. federal relief money went toward American-based NGOs and aid groups. The problem is these groups would buy supplies and goods from American companies even if they heavily subsidized their products and undercut the local products.
In other cases, these NGOs did not coordinate with each other and instead helped the major areas and neglected others.
This may just be the leftist in me speaking, but what we need to do is have the government step in and control exactly how our money is spent. I know some people hate the idea of this, but I am sure people hate their tax   dollars being wasted even more.
Perhaps what we need is an international equivalent of FEMA, or perhaps we need to create a temporary branch for whenever a disaster arises.
Look, I know we haven’t had the greatest history with government relief, and I’m sure some of you are shaking your heads as you read this right now.
However, maybe we can try to make as much out of situations like this as we can. We’re having a job crisis, and an undertaking such as this would require a ton of manpower to get the wheels working. Hire more people to be sent over to disaster zones under government control and have those people be monitored by an expanded disaster relief bureau.
Another issue, which pertains more to Pakistan than other recent disaster zones, is our political situation in the region. We do not have the best relationship with some of the Pakistani population. If we directly help the people, as opposed to giving money to other organizations, we could improve how they view us.
We just need to make sure the more than $71 million we’re pledging is being used the best it can.
Understandably, for a large part we may already be controlling our relief practices, but more must be done before we continue to give aid to those in need. Not only is this important for our crippled economy by ensuring the resources we send are not wasted by mismanagement or corruption, but also to make sure the people in need are properly receiving help.
I think we all know how infuriating it is when disaster relief goes wrong. As it is now, it’s simply a waste of our tax dollars and inefficient to those in dire need of our help.
 
Zachary Davis is a 19-year-old history sophomore from Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_zdavis.
 
 
 
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Contact Zachary Davis at [email protected]