KARACHI, Nov 21: A father from Umarkot brought his four children to the Edhi Home in Sohrab Goth hours after a girl was left at the charity’s Meethadar centre by her paternal aunt on Friday.

The abandonment of five children at two Edhi centres served as a grim reminder of the recent episode in which three mothers left their eight children in the care of the Edhi Foundation a couple of days back.

While such events might cause the authorities to take anti-poverty measures on an urgent basis, Abdul Sattar Edhi feels certain that these heart-wrenching episodes are not going to end anytime soon.

“The pace at which poverty is engulfing the beleaguered middle class, we might have around 20 million people facing hunger over the next 10 years,” he predicted.

“We are not unacquainted with the gravity of the crisis afflicting society. But this time it is the media that has taken up the matter in a big way and seem determined to inform the public about it. It is about time the government also became aware of the crisis.”

By Friday evening, he had gathered all the five abandoned children at the Bilquees Edhi Foundation Centre in Meethadar, where they were offered food and new clothes.

Most of the children, aged between one and six years, hardly knew the words to express their anguish. Distraught, they cried inconsolably. Documents at the Bilquees Edhi Foundation Centre show that four out of the five abandoned children are siblings and children of a new convert to Islam from Umarkot District, Manthar Ali. His affidavit attached to a file on the children quotes him as saying that due to abject poverty he could not afford to raise his children – Mohammad Ali, 6, Ghulam Fatima, 5, Zahida, 4, and Asia, 2.

The one-year-old Laiba, who was brought by her paternal aunt Perveen from Baldia Town, remained unfazed as strange faces of reporters and Edhi volunteers swirled around her.

Her widowed aunt, who says she has three children of her own to bring up, also cites poverty as the reason which caused her to abandon her niece whose parents died a year ago.

The arrival of five young newcomers to the Bilquees Edhi Foundation Centre in Meethadar has taken the number of children left by poverty-stricken parents or by their relatives after the death of their parents at the charity to 43.

However, the growing number of homeless children being placed in the care of the Edhi Foundation has not dampened the enthusiasm of the philanthropist who said he could accommodate nearly 200,000 children in the different facilities he ran across the country.

“The government should accept the reality of poverty and face the challenge,” he said, alluding to the statement of a provincial minister who vowed to move against the parents abandoning their children and termed it an illegal act and a conspiracy against the elected government.

“These statements would further harass poverty-stricken parents and force them to get rid of their children through other means. The PPP manifesto promises food, clothing and housing for the poor – it is time such commitments were honoured,” he said.