Fact-check: JUI-F politician is not taking back money from flood survivors

Multiple social media posts claim that a video shows a politician from a religious political party distributing money to flood survivors and then taking it back.

The claim is false.

In the original video, recorded on September 20, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s (F) secretary general, Maulana Rashid Mahmood Soomro, can be seen handing out Rs1,000 each to gathered flood victims in the Matiari district of Sindh.

After which, a man, walking behind the politician, retrieves something back from the survivors.

Claim

On September 26, several tweets began circulating on social media alleging that Soomro was taking back the money he was distributing. The video has garnered over 175,000 views on Twitter alone.

In one post, a social media user writes: “Soomro is handing out Rs1,000 to flood victims to get his video made…When in reality his colleague is taking back the money that very instant.”

Fact

Rashid Mahmood Soomro shared an extended version of the video with Geo Fact Check. In the video it can be seen that Mahmood’s colleague is re-claiming paper tokens and not money from the survivors in Sindh.

Soomro told Geo Fact Check that workers of his political party visit flood-affected areas a day before and distribute paper tokens.

“The next day when we go to give them aid,” the politician said, “We then take back the tokens to keep a record of how much we have distributed and to also ensure that no one gets double aid.”

Geo Fact Check also reached out to Tariq Hussain, a flood survivor in Larkana, who was provided humanitarian assistance by the religious party. Hussain confirmed that the religious party hands out tokens a day before and later takes back the very same tokens.

Thumbnail image: Displaced flood affected people receive food packets at a makeshift camp in Nowshera of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on August 29, 2022. — AFP

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