IRIN
PAKISTAN: Focus on earthquake recovery 12 months on
9 October 2006


[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United 
Nations]

MUZAFFARABAD, 9 October (IRIN) - One year after the worst natural 
disaster in Pakistan's 59-year history, which left 75,000 people dead 
and another 3.5 million homeless, progress on earthquake recovery has 
remained slow and many reconstruction programmes are facing a funding 
deficit.

People in the affected areas have begun the slow process of rebuilding 
their lives but reconstruction efforts are being held back by a host of 
administrative difficulties and a continuing information gap between the 
authorities and the survivors, aid workers say.

"Survivors have begun rebuilding their homes, communities and 
livelihoods. But, the rebuilding process has, so far, been very patchy, 
slow and complex," Farhana Faruqi Stocker, head of international aid 
agency Oxfam, said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

"People need to be clearly informed about the financial and technical 
support they are entitled to and the guidance on building 
earthquake-resistant homes must be easily available and understandable," 
Stocker explained.

Private housing suffered the most extensive damage from the 8 October 
earthquake last year, which ripped through parts of Pakistan's North 
West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

Some 600,000 rural and 30,000 urban housing units were affected across a 
30,000 sq km mountainous terrain, covering nine districts and 4,000 
villages, according to the revised damage assessment of the Earthquake 
Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA). Initial estimates 
put the number of homes to be rebuilt at 400,000.

Under ERRA's housing reconstruction grant, some 422,777 owners have 
already received money - a quarter of whom have started rebuilding, 
according to ERRA.

Building Back by 2009

On Thursday, speaking at ERRA's first annual review conference, 
Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf promised that 80 percent of the 
reconstruction work in quake-hit areas would be completed by 2009, with 
housing units finished by December 2008.

He added that the addition of 200,000 homes, following a revised 
assessment, has increased the overall cost of reconstruction.

"The cost of US $3.6 billion calculated earlier for the reconstruction 
phase has now increased to $4.4 billion, creating a shortfall of $800 
million," Musharraf said.

He appealed to the international community and philanthropists to bridge 
the funding gap.

Funding gaps in Early Recovery Plan

The lack of funds is also hampering efforts to get sectors such as 
health and education up and running again.

In May, the United Nations and ERRA launched an Early Recovery Plan 
(ERP) to bridge the gap from relief to reconstruction in the country's 
quake-affect north. The total cost of the plan was revised from an 
initial $190 million to $255 million.

"As of the end of August, in total, some $161 million had been 
mobilised, leaving a funding gap of $94 million," Shoko Noda, a recovery 
coordination advisor at the UN Integrated Office of the Resident 
Coordinator (UNORC), said in Islamabad.

The ERP, covering a 12-month period from May 2006 to April 2007, charted 
concrete proposals in eight sectors, including education, health, water 
and sanitation, housing, needs of vulnerable groups, disaster risk 
reduction and coordination.

However, many of the sectors have been facing a serious funding crisis. 
The health sector has received less than 50 percent of the total $40 
million needed to fund its programmes.

"A serious crisis for health of vulnerable people could occur if the 
coming winter were to be severe - as some predict it to be," Noda said.

The other least-funded sectors include water and sanitation, housing and 
support to vulnerable people.

The annual review report of ERRA, released on Thursday, noted: "The 
pledges made in the donors' conference in November 2005 did not 
materialise through the Government of Pakistan as envisaged earlier; 
rather funding was being channelled directly through implementing NGOs 
working in various sectors with communities on the ground."

Missing quality education

While some progress is being made in the provision of the basic needs of 
shelter, food and drinking water and rehabilitation of infrastructure, 
education experts feel the education sector is missing out.

More than a million schoolchildren were affected by the quake and around 
8,000 schools were destroyed or damaged across the affected region.

While thousands of children spent the last year without proper education 
in tent schools, education experts estimate they will have to face many 
more years without proper classrooms.

Saima Anwer, education director at the Pakistani branch of UK-based 
charity Save the Children said: "It will take five to seven years to 
rebuild the education system, meaning some children will never get to 
attend a real primary school."

"So far bureaucracy, a lack of commitment and insufficient funding for 
the education sector has meant that the permanent reconstruction of 
schools has been extremely slow and in some places non-existent. School 
enrolment rates have also plummeted," Save the Children-UK said in a 
statement.

"Despite the problems they face, children and teachers walk for hours 
through difficult terrain every morning to get to school. But inadequate 
shelter, lack of water supplies and sanitation facilities, shortage of 
teachers and learning material - all provided for a poor learning 
environment," Anwer said.

"But, even after an emergency, every child has the right to a quality 
education. We think they deserve the same enthusiasm from the government 
to give them back a safe and conducive learning environment by stepping 
up the pace of rebuilding," she added.

Nevertheless, reconstruction and recovery has never been easy.

"When we look at Japan, which is the world's 2nd largest economy, it 
took five years to rebuild 140,000 homes after the 1995 quake in Kobe. 
Obviously, the Pakistani government does not have that wealth, technical 
expertise, institutional framework and experience to deliver faster than 
Japan," Oxfam's Stocker said.


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