KARACHI, Oct 25: Speakers at a meeting on Tuesday urged the authorities to speed up their relief efforts in the earthquake-hit areas as with the winter setting in time was running out fast for the survivors.
Speaking at a consultation programme on “Role of civil society organizations in providing relief to the earthquake survivors”, organized by the Aurat Foundation, they stressed that the local communities should be involved in the relief operations.
They demanded that a large number of special tents, which could handle the extreme weather conditions, should be sent to the disaster-hit areas so that people could survive through the winter.
The speakers stressed that all the relief funds being generated locally as well as from overseas, be given to the governments of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the NWFP so that they with the assistance from the district governments and the local communities and civil society organizations could jointly work for the relief of survivors.
They also stressed that complete transparency be observed in the relief operations and people be informed weekly, if not on daily basis, as to ascertain how much funding was coming in, how it was being spent and by whom.
Pointing out to reports that some women and children in the earthquake-hit areas had been kidnapped by human traffickers, they stressed that the government should evolve a foolproof method so that the women and children, who have lost all their families and had nobody to look after them, were not grabbed by the traffickers and smugglers.
They also expressed concern over the reports that over a 100 lady health workers had gone missing in the earthquake hit areas and demanded that safety and security of the female staff be ensured. They also pointed out that more female staff, particularly related to the field of medicine, was needed in the disaster hit areas to provide medical assistance to the female survivors, so it was important the they were provided safety so that other females could go there to help without any fear.
Mentioning that wood, iron, tin sheets and other material can be reused in construction, they urged the authorities to help the survivors to remove the debris of their houses and also help them recover reusable construction material. They also urged the authorities to employ local people, a vast majority of whom had become unemployed owing to the earthquake, in the relief operations so that they could earn livelihood.
The speakers also demanded a high-level inquiry to find out why the majority of the government buildings – civilian as well as those belonging to the law enforcement agencies – had been destroyed by the earthquake. They claimed that it was due to the corruption in the bureaucracy and the contractors’ mafia. The culprits must be brought to book and stern action be taken against them, they said.
Some of the speakers also criticized the role of government and law enforcement agencies in rescue operation, whose response according to them was very slow. They said that there were many quake-hit areas where even after the passage of weeks relief had not yet reached the victims. They also demanded that more helicopters be used for the relief work.
They also criticized the government for stating that they were not aware of location of many villages in the remote areas and said that both the Kashmiris were highly militarized zones where hundreds of thousands of troops were stationed for the past many years and it was unbelievable that both the governments did not know the locations of villages.
It was recommended that advocacy, accountability, housing, education and health committees should be set up so that steps could be taken to provide assistance to those who were already working in the disaster-hit areas.
Former judge of the Supreme Court Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid, former federal law minister Iqbal Haider, Prof Nauman, Arif Hassan, Fahim Zaman, Dr Haroon, Dr Shershah Syed, M.B. Naqvi, Karamat Ali, Anis Haroon, Uzma Noorani, and others also spoke.
