Sindh, Our Home Province: Free Help From Karachi to Kashmore

Sindh is home ground for Peace and Humanity Welfare Organization (PHWO): our head office stands in Lahori Muhalla, Larkana, and the province remains closest to our work. Families write to us from the flats of Karachi and the goths of Tharparkar, from the rice belt around Larkana and the fishing creeks of Sujawal. Anyone in the province hoping to find an NGO in Sindh that charges nothing, belongs to no party and serves every faith will find here an honest account of what PHWO offers and where its limits lie, and links to a page for each of Sindh’s main districts.

One point matters above all: PHWO has a single office, the registered one in Larkana. We have no branches, centres, camps or paid staff in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur or any other Sindh city. Sindhis outside Larkana use the website, message PHWO from your free PHWO account, or ask a volunteer from their own town to help.

Sindh by the 2023 Census

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics counted 55,696,147 people in Sindh in 2023, on 140,914 square kilometres. The province grew by about 2.6 percent a year from 47,854,510 in 2017. At almost 54 percent, Sindh has the highest urban share of any province, largely because of Karachi, whose seven districts hold more than a third of all Sindhis.

Outside Karachi, the picture changes sharply. Tharparkar is only 8 percent urban and Sujawal under 11 percent. The census report puts provincial literacy at 57.54 percent, but Thatta, at 26.88 percent, and Sujawal, at 27.02 percent, are far below that, while Karachi Central exceeds 83 percent. Province-wide, 46.29 percent of boys and girls between five and sixteen do not attend school, rising to 75.79 percent in Thatta.

Those gaps shape the requests we receive. In the big cities people most often ask about rent, fees and debts; in rural districts it is ration, flood losses and schooling.

What families across Sindh ask PHWO for

Several needs come up again and again, whichever district a request is from:

• A laptop or phone for study or earning. Students in Jamshoro, Larkana, Nawabshah and Karachi, and graduates hoping to work online from small towns, ask for devices more than almost anything else.
• Ration. Households whose earner is ill, jobless, disabled or has died.
• Debt. Loans from shopkeepers, commission agents, landlords and moneylenders that grew after a lost crop, a flood, a wedding or an illness.
• Medicine and treatment, school and college fees, rent, and losses from floods, fire or cyclones.

Apply through Request help with a live photo of yourself. A volunteer checks the details, and PHWO assesses whether the need holds up and lies within its means. Support is arranged where both are true, with no promise made beforehand and no fee taken from anyone.

Free legal aid in Sindh, mostly for family cases

The great majority of legal requests PHWO receives from Sindh are family matters: a wife seeking khula, unpaid maintenance, custody and guardianship of children, and the return of dowry articles. These cases are heard by family courts in every district headquarters, from Karachi’s district courts to those at Mithi, Kandhkot and Sujawal, with appeals and constitutional petitions going to the Sindh High Court and its benches.

Through our free legal aid page, volunteer advocates read requests from anywhere in the province. Writing to us does not require an FIR. Files about children, and files with a date in court only days off, go to the top of the pile. Whether an advocate accepts a case, and how a judge rules, are outside PHWO’s control.

In each Sindh district there is also a District Legal Empowerment Committee, supported by the Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan, which can pay a lawyer’s fees for people who cannot afford one. Ask for it at your district court. Provincial laws, including the Sindh Hindu Marriage Act and the Sindh Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, can be read on the official Sindh laws portal.

The 2022 floods and what they left behind

No recent event has shaped Sindh’s needs as much as the monsoon floods of 2022. The provincial disaster authority’s report dated 13 September 2022 counted 10,548,065 people affected across the province and 6,922,083 displaced. It recorded 489,222 houses destroyed and more than a million partly damaged, 3,433,115 acres of crops lost, 180,911 livestock dead and 8,431 kilometres of road damaged. On that single day, 1,718 relief camps held 529,801 people.

Naushahro Feroze, Larkana, Khairpur and Dadu ran the most camps; Hyderabad, Khairpur and Sanghar had the most affected union councils. Years later, many households still carry debts taken on to rebuild. Losses from that flood, or from later rains, can be described in any request to PHWO.

Find your district

Each page below has local facts, public services and advice written for that district:

• Larkana Division: Larkana, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Kashmore (Kandhkot)
• Sukkur Division: Sukkur, Khairpur, Ghotki
• Shaheed Benazirabad Division: Nawabshah, Naushahro Feroze, Sanghar
• Hyderabad Division: Hyderabad, Jamshoro, Dadu, Matiari, Tando Allahyar, Tando Muhammad Khan, Thatta, Sujawal, Badin
• Mirpurkhas Division: Mirpurkhas, Umerkot, Mithi (Tharparkar)
• Karachi Division: Karachi

If your district is not listed, you can still apply; PHWO accepts requests from all of Pakistan. See the national overview at NGO in Pakistan.

Volunteering in Sindh, starting from Larkana

Many PHWO volunteers come from Larkana, where our office is, and from the districts around it. We want the same kind of local network in every Sindh district, because a volunteer who knows the mohalla and speaks the family’s language, whether Sindhi, Urdu, Seraiki, Balochi, Brahui or Dhatki, can check a request fairly and kindly.

Lawyers are needed most, especially for family cases in district courts. Teachers, students, doctors and social workers are also welcome, as are fundraisers in Sindh and among Sindhis abroad. Join on the volunteer page. Sindh volunteers are given a PHWO certificate, and we add written thanks and an experience letter.

Giving from Sindh and from abroad

Traders in Karachi and Hyderabad, landowners in upper Sindh, and the many Sindhi families in the Gulf, the UK and North America can all donate money or goods to PHWO, or sponsor a case for one verified household. Not one rupee of your Zakat or Sadaqah is held back; all of it goes to the deserving. The Zakat calculator works out the amount due on cash, gold, silver and business stock. Businesses and institutions that want to work with us more closely can use the partner page.

Public services across Sindh worth knowing

• Emergency: police 15; Sindh Emergency Rescue Service 1122, now in many districts; Edhi ambulance 115; Sindh women’s helpline 1094.
• BISP: Kafaalat quarterly payments for women in poor households, Taleemi Wazaif school stipends and Nashonuma nutrition support; helpline 0800-26477.
• Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal: federal support for the poor, including medical assistance.
• Sindh Social Protection Authority: the provincial body for social protection schemes.
• Teaching hospitals: Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and Civil Hospital (Dow) in Karachi, Liaquat University Hospital in Hyderabad and Jamshoro, the Chandka hospital attached to the Larkana medical university, and the Peoples University hospital in Nawabshah.

PHWO’s support is separate from these services and can sit alongside them. Sindh families of every faith are welcome on the free Rishta Desk too; each profile is checked with a live selfie and reviewed by PHWO staff, and parents and applicants decide everything.

Public services in Sindh you can also use

• Sindh High CourtPrincipal seat in Karachi, with benches and circuit courts elsewhere in the province.
• Law and Justice Commission of PakistanSupports District Legal Empowerment Committees that pay lawyers for the poor.
• Sindh laws portalOfficial texts of provincial laws.
• Benazir Income Support ProgrammeKafaalat, Taleemi Wazaif and Nashonuma; 0800-26477.
• Pakistan Bait-ul-MalFederal assistance for the poor, including medical help.
• Sindh Social Protection AuthorityProvincial social protection programmes.
• Sindh Emergency Rescue Service 1122Provincial rescue service now running in many districts.
• Sindh PoliceEmergency 15; women's helpline 1094.

These are public or independent services, listed to help you. They are not part of PHWO.

Frequently asked questions