MUZAFFARABAD, June 3: Some 55,000 earthquake survivors will be relocated due to the danger posed by monsoon landslides in Azad and Jammu Kashmir, officials said on Saturday.

“A strategy is being evolved to relocate some 50 to 55 thousand people from areas prone to landslides before the start of monsoon season,” the region’s top administrator Kashif Murtaza said. He said that 18 villages were likely to be affected.

The government would work with the UN and other aid agencies get people out of harm’s way, he said and added: “It is a big challenge to relocate the most vulnerable to safer places before the monsoon starts.”

Depending on how many people need to be resettled the government may have to buy land near Muzaffarabad, he added.

The government already pays 25,000 jobless survivors a monthly benefit of Rs3,000 rupees under a six-month grant programme.

It has also paid Rs4.27 billion to 58,000 survivors whose houses were damaged by the earthquake.—AFP