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| December 24, 2005 | Saturday | Ziqa’ad 21, 1426 |
Opposition asked to join relief panel
ISLAMABAD, DEC. 23: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has urged the opposition to join the Parliamentary Committee on Relief so that reconstruction activities, which do not have any political motive, may be speeded up. “After their joining, relief activities would be more coordinated and speedy and this would help us alleviate miseries of the affected people”, he said while talking to reporters here Friday.
Mr Aziz said reconstruction activities would commence in the first week of March. He said the NWFP and Azad Kashmir governments would undertake reconstruction while Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) would supervise it. He said Erra would ensure quality reconstruction of houses so that they could resist high magnitude earthquake in future.
He said the government was actively engaged in rehabilitation activities while an amount of Rs17 billion had so far been disbursed among the victims for building temporary homes.
Mr Aziz said the government would provide Rs175,000 to every house-hold for reconstruction of their homes. He said that twenty-five thousand rupees had already been provided to each house-hold for building temporary houses.
He said the government had been able to check epidemics outbreak in the quake-affected areas. However some cases of pneumonia had been reported, he said, adding that various donors had committed reconstruction of hospitals and basic health units in different areas. He said that new sponsored-hospitals would be built in Muzafarrabad, Rawalakot, Bagh and Balakot and Erra was finalizing their designs.
The prime minister said special focus was also being put on restoration of educational activities and tent schools had been set up in almost all affected areas to enrol maximum number of kids. He said the government had chalked out a number of programmes to restore full educational activities and one of the scheme envisaged erection of pre-fabricated schools.
In reply to a question Mr Aziz said those who pledged donations in the donors conference were finalizing their pledges to speed up rehabilitation and reconstruction activities. He said that World Bank had provided four hundred million dollars interest-free loan for reconstruction while negotiations were underway to get soft term loans from other donors.
The PM said reconstruction and rehabilitation was a long process but with the support of people and international community the government would be able to overcome hurdles and revive normal life in the affected areas.
Earlier, the PM dispatched ten truck loads of relief goods, including weather-sheets, blankets, tents, sleeping bags, baby garments to Dhirkot and Rangla areas of Bagh district.
The goods had been arranged by the Ministry of Women Development in collaboration with the Overseas Pakistanis and donor agencies of China, Japan and Germany.
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