ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Funds needed for rebuilding the infrastructure and lives destroyed by the earthquake should better be generated at home rather than abroad, a NGO executive said here on Monday. “We could, and still can, generate the Rs300 billion required for the rehabilitation and reconstruction internally,” Mr Harris Khalique, chief of the Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO), said, opposing taking loans for the purpose.

Mr Khalique was discussing the post-earthquake concerns of the civil society at the Centre for Democratic Development run by the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

His main concerns were that two-third of the $5.8 billion amount pledged by foreign donors for the rehabilitation and reconstruction work was in the form of loans and that all the emphasis was on rebuilding the physical infrastructure instead of “social rehabilitation” of the 3.5 million people affected by the earthquake. “We cannot imagine the kind of social problems people who lost their limbs, particularly women, in the earthquake would pose for the society five years down,” he said.

“Every loan and grant comes with strings,” said Mr Khalique, a graduate of London School of Economics. Donors conference was a success for those having eyes on contracts.

Reconstruction would involve consultants and contracts which donors would finance from their pledges. Some donors brought in non-government organizations (NGOs) from their own country even during the relief phase, he said.

“Local ownership and public trust in the transparency of the spending on reconstruction and rehabilitation work is essential. But there has been very little involvement of either the affected people or the local administration,” he said.

“You cannot manage the huge undertaking from Islamabad,” the NGO executive said, regretting that even the opposition confined its demand to involving the National Assembly in the effort with no regard for the NWFP and Azad Kashmir assemblies.

Though the immediate response by the government and the army to the disaster was faltering, mainly because of its scale, the public rose to the occasion from the very start, he said.

The government’s handling of the situation improved later but “in a closed society even the good work by the government is not trusted”, he noted. Mr Khalique agreed with a comment from the audience that “a disaster coming to a mismanaged people is a total disaster”.