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| April 19, 2006 | Wednesday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 20, 1427 |
Erra, UN agree on action plan
ISLAMABAD, April 18: The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) and the United Nations have finally agreed on the National Action Plan (NAP) for reconstruction amidst concerns that the process could be much longer than anticipated.
The NAP covers a one-year period and has recovery phase- specific activities. The document drafted with strong inputs from the UN agencies and international NGOs in field clusters and hubs would help the donors identify the projects.
“We now have agreement on the document. We are fine tuning it and would be sharing it with partners sometime later this week, probably at the weekly donor meeting organised by Erra,” UN Resident Coordinator Jan Vandemoortele told Dawn on Tuesday.
Originally, NAP was to be launched by April 10 but had to be delayed because of Erra’s objections. Erra considered it to be too expensive. It had particularly objected to huge presence of international staff on the projects.
NAP has a financial outlay of $300 million. The UN already has $100 million with itself which is the leftover amount from the flash appeal and some additional donations. “We are looking for another $200 million,” said the UN official.
Many UN-proposed projects have been dropped in the finally agreed document.
“We accepted this, because we believe this is a partnership of equals. It is the partnership of ideas changing minds and not money changing hands and that is important,” he said.
Mr Vandemoortele rejected the impression that there were differences between the UN and Erra on NAP, saying that the rigorous exercise of intensive discussions between different stakeholders before agreeing on the final document was indispensable.
“There could have been no substitute to it. All of us benefited from it,” he said, cautioning that shortcuts could have been more harmful.
“We could have rushed through and imposed it but that’s the old way of doing things, which we intended to change,” he said and added that it was important for having genuine and homegrown ownership of the project.
About NAP, he said, the challenge was always to make sure that transition from relief to reconstruction did not have any gap because reconstruction seldom readily picked up and got in full swing. “It’s complex, takes a while and there are several issues involved and NAP is all about this,” he impressed.
On the issue of reconstruction, Mr Vandemoortele said it was a complex task and would be very difficult especially because of challenges like landslides and issue of Balakot and Muzaffarabad being on the faultlines.
It would be miraculous to have the reconstruction work completed in three years, he said. “It would take few years more and I would rate it as a job well done even if it is completed in five years.”
To a question, he said, Erra had its capacity limitations. For example, it does not have chief of planning, a key function.
“It would be really unfair for anybody to expect Erra to be fully capable of running this very complex thing,” he said.
However, Erra was building up and moving in the right direction. “Capacity is being injected and substance is coming in,” he noted.
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