Around 35,000 families across Rawalpindi division have received no Zakat assistance for 26 months, as a funding suspension has pushed the Rawalpindi Zakat Department close to collapse.
The affected include roughly 10,000 beneficiaries in Rawalpindi district and 25,000 families, many of them widows, in the other five districts of the division: Murree, Attock, Chakwal, Jhelum and Talagang. None has received financial assistance or a subsistence allowance during this period.
Beneficiaries were also denied the Rs3,000 Eid grant on all four Eid occasions in 2025 and 2026. Free hospital treatment, medicines and kidney dialysis have been discontinued for eligible patients in all six districts, along with medicines for hepatitis and diabetes patients.
Other welfare programmes have also stopped. Assistance to families of leprosy patients and to visually impaired people has been suspended for two years, and scholarships for talented children from poor families have been discontinued. The Rs25,000 marriage grant for widows’ daughters has likewise been halted for the past two years.
The suspension has deepened hardship among widows, orphans and families living below the poverty line. Some have resorted to begging, while others work as domestic help, washing dishes, floors and clothes in private homes. Rising unemployment has further limited their options.
