IRIN
PAKISTAN: Thousands of quake survivors still homeless one year on
5 October 2006


BALAKOT, 5 October (IRIN) - Almost a year on, many survivors of last 
October's devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan face the coming 
winter without adequate shelter.

Abdul Ghafoor, 60, squints his eyes as he peers up towards the mountains 
above his village of Kashian, in Balakot district.

"I am looking out for the first signs of snow, or the changes in weather 
that herald the onset of winter," he tells IRIN.

Ghafoor and his son, Abdul Rehmat, 32, have good reason to keep a sharp 
eye on the weather. The two men are locked in a struggle to complete 
their new home before the intense Himalayan winter closes in. Planks of 
wood, tubs of cement and piles of stone lie all around the area where 
they work.

"The grant of compensation [given by the Pakistani government to 
survivors who lost homes] was delayed, then the government said it 
wanted us to follow a particular pattern for construction, and then, 
just as we started, there were flash floods in the Balakot area after 
monsoon rains in July," Rehmat says.

He added: "If we can't finish this house, I will have to move down to a 
tent village."

Watching the men at work from a rickety tin shack are Rehmat's four 
young children. Their mother was among the 73,000 people who died in the 
quake that struck parts of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province 
(NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir on 8 October 2005.

The youngest child, Farid, was nine months old at the time. He is now an 
active toddler, busily exploring the piles of sand and clambering onto 
the low walls of what will finally be a new house. For most of his life 
his only home has been the makeshift tin and canvas shelter his father 
put up soon after the quake.

Across the quake zone, construction is continuing everywhere. Even 
though piles of rubble still lie on vast stretches of ground and many 
schools are run in makeshift huts, there are visible signs of recovery. 
"People are looking towards the future. They are planning lives again, 
and building homes," says Balakot's mayor, Junaid Qasim.

In his own, shattered town, quite literally flattened by the quake, 
people have begun putting up houses and shops, despite government plans 
to move the town some 30 km south to a safe site.

"We have lived in this tent for a year. We cannot just remain in it 
month after month. We have begun to rebuild here, regardless of 
government plans," Masood Hussain, one of Balakot's 30,000 residents, 
says as he stands by a new house which is close to completion.

At least 4,000 people died in Balakot, and an official decision has been 
taken to relocate the town, which currently stands atop a major 
fault-line. The heaps of debris still lying everywhere are a reminder of 
what havoc another quake here could bring.

According to official data, 600,000 homes still need to be built or 
repaired across the quake zone. About 1.8 million survivors will be 
forced to spend another difficult winter in transitional shelters 
because of patchy progress with recovery and slow construction of 
housing and infrastructure, aid agency Oxfam said in a report released 
on Wednesday.

Corruption by officials was compounding the miseries of the survivors, 
it said.

"Several instances have come to our notice wherein local officials 
verifying land ownership documents have been involved in corruption and 
the situation is serious enough for the government and humanitarian 
community to take action," Oxfam Country Representative Farhana Farouqi 
Stocker told a press briefing.

It is not known how many people may, as was the case last year, choose 
once more to move down from mountain villages as winter closes in.

Many survivors meanwhile are increasingly angry that, a year after the 
quake, they still have no home. "The compensation money came in very 
late, there was no planning and lots of money meant for us went into the 
pockets of influential people," claims Rasheed Khan, 23, in Balakot.

His mother, Zubaida Bibi, 50, adds: "They knew we could build only 
during the summer, before the rains of July and August, but they did not 
care."

The fact that many families missed that narrow window of opportunity to 
build has meant that, like Abdul Ghafoor and Rehmat, they are now locked 
in a desperate race against time.

Over the past few months, it has also become increasingly clear that 
there were problems in the distribution of compensation cheques. The 
National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan's premier anti-corruption 
institute, was reported in August to have found that 50 percent of the 
first tranche of compensation money was given to fraudulent claimants. 
An investigation continues.

But despite the problems progress is being made. According to Pakistan's 
Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), at least 
half a million affected people have received all or most of the sum of 
approximately US $3,000 promised in compensation by the Pakistani 
government.

ERRA chief Altaf Saleem appears confident about the pace of 
reconstruction work, and recently told reporters in the federal capital 
Islamabad: "We are well prepared for winter this year, and I don't 
foresee major problems."

While some sense of panic still persists, there is also a feeling that 
people are gradually beginning to look ahead once more.

Despite the massive loss of livelihood and infrastructure, attempts are 
on to set up new businesses. Small tailoring shops, general stores and 
bakeries can be spotted at many locations. Many children too are back at 
school, even if it is run in a tent or a makeshift shack, and, 
ironically, because of the involvement of dozens of national and 
international relief efforts in the quake recovery effort, many areas 
now have better educational and health facilities than they did before 
the quake.

"We still face many hurdles ahead - but at least we are moving forward, 
a few small steps at a time. My daughters are going to school for the 
first time, and, one day, we will be able to push this quake to the very 
back of our minds," said Rehmat, as he nailed together a window-frame - 
each forceful hammer blow also signalling the rebuilding of his own life 
and that of his family, one year after the quake that shattered their 
lives.


IRIN-Asia
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Fax: +90 312 495 4166
Email: IrinAsia@IRINnews.org


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