April 23, 2006	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 24, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, April 22: The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority and the United Nations on Saturday launched a $288 million one-year national action plan after projects worth $100 million proposed by the humanitarian community were dropped due to Erra’s objections.

The total layout of NAP has been adjusted at $288 million from $386 million after consultations on cutting down overhead costs and making the criteria more stringent for implementation process ensuring transparency and efficiency.

About $100 million are already available with the UN as the leftover amount of the flash appeal and some additional donations. Therefore, the UN is basically seeking $188 million for the one-year activities.

It was Unicef that saw most of its projects dropped from the NAP.

UN Resident Coordinator Jan Vandemoortele told a briefing that despite the huge cut in the amount, 90 per cent of the activity and substance remained intact.

Deputy Chairman Erra Maj-Gen Nadeem Ahmed, explaining the cut in the amount, said it was primarily because of the fact that some projects were being duplicated, others were being covered by development programmes and additionally there were certain things that UN was not aware of.

He said UN had nothing to offer for problems like slope stabilisation and were asking for 12 helicopters that looked unfeasible and had to be cut down to four. The programme, he said, now looked more viable.

Flooded with questions about the UN-Erra differences over NAP, capacity limitation of Erra and other critical remarks, the general remarked: “We (Erra) are as lousy as the UN but are not as bad as many people think us to be.”

The early recovery plan outlines a set of operational programmes for early response to minimize the gap between relief and reconstruction. It highlights how a large range of development and relief partners will cover early recovery activities in both the NWFP and Azad Kashmir over the next 12 months.

Its objective is to support the longer-term road to recovery by bridging the end of the relief operations and the start of reconstruction. It is the phase when the focus shifts from saving lives to restoring livelihoods.

The UN coordinator explained that NAP was related to the software component of the recovery and focuses on skill training, seed distributions, food and cash for work projects, teacher training programmes and training material, psyco-social work, water and sanitation activities and establishment of early health warning systems.

The monitoring aspect of the reconstruction work, the Erra deputy chief said, would be outsourced to a private firm. He, however, refused to comment if National Accountability Bureau lacked the capacity to do the job.