LAHORE, Oct 20: A five-member team of experts of the UN’s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is to undertake a tour of the earthquake affected areas of Azad Kashmir to assess the damage the calamity inflicted on agriculture and livestock of the region. The tour commences from Friday.
The UN has already accepted the FAO recommendation of allocating $14.2 million for rehabilitating the farmers who have been hit by the calamity, the deadliest natural disaster suffered by any part of Pakistan in the country’s history.
A spokesman of the organization in Islamabad told Dawn that the initially proposed $14.2 million had now been revised upward to $25 million. However, the figure was not official yet and would become so after it was announced by the UN Secretary General.
The initial aid is to be spent on about 100,000 people. The number of affected farmers and breeders to be covered by FAO support could be increased if the funds available to the organization are increased. They would be spent on raising livestock, restoring badly damaged farming sector infrastructure and revive services and markets.
While no official statistics are available to exactly identify the percentage of people practicing farming and livestock breeding, it is generally known that these were two of the main economic activities of a large segment of the population of Azad Kashmir prior to the earthquake.
But the earthquake turned agriculture fields, mostly small tracts of land, upside down and there is no information on the number of killed or surviving animals. Whatever the exact situation, the sectors have been destroyed as completely and as terribly as homes of the people that have been widely reduced to rubbles in the quake hit parts of Azad Kashmir.
The FAO team is led by Shahid Najam, a senior official of the organization who is a former DMG officer from Pakistan. Other members include Daud Khan, who heads the Investment Centre of FAO; he is also a Pakistani. Other members include an economist Manzal and Peter Reed, a livelihood expert.
The FAO team is scheduled to spend two weeks in Azad Kashmir while its stay in Pakistan is expected to be for about four weeks. After surveying agriculture and livestock losses, it would recommend a rehabilitation plan. FAO is likely to provide expertise for the implementation of its plan.
Interestingly, while the government has appointed a Rehabilitation Commissioner and the prime minister has announced a 12-point relief and rehabilitation programme for the quake hit regions, there has between no mention of agriculture and livestock in the governmental planning. Neither has the Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock that oversees the sectors, has sent any team for the assessment of damage to either Azad Kashmir or Mansehra areas.
