July 12, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 15, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, July 11: United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) on Tuesday unveiled a $150 million recovery plan spanning over next three years for the quake-ravaged areas. Speaking at a press conference here, Officer-in-Charge of Unicef and head of the fund’s emergency programme for Pakistan Terje Thodesen said Unicef unlike other UN agencies wouldn’t be scaling down its activities and continue to work in the sectors it previously worked during the relief phase viz water and sanitation, child protection and education.

Of the $150 million, the UN Children’s Fund plans to spend, it has got almost $75 million with itself and would be appealing to the international community for the remaining amount.

Unicef plans to carry out its activities in Bagh and Muzaffarabad in the AJK, and Battagram, Mansehra and Abbotabad in the NWFP, where it would be constructing 500 permanent schools, some 70 health facilities and 1,000 rural water systems. The schools and health centres would also be equipped, and training would be given to 20,000 teachers and 4,000 health workers.

In addition, Unicef would support a community-based initiative for looking after the children rendered orphans in the October 8 disaster. A survey conducted earlier in February-March had registered 13,000 orphans in camps. “We want them to be looked after in their local communities.”

Mr Thodesen said Unicef would prefer to carry out its planned activities through government of Pakistan or its agencies and departments, but in areas wherever the government was unable to execute the activities because of its capacity constraints, the projects would be executed through NGOs, preferably local ones.

In case no NGOs are ready to take up the work, then Unicef would get it done by itself. Besides, the Unicef official said a local engineering company would be engaged to look after the technical aspect of rebuilding efforts, quality control and documentation.

Unicef is also aiming at enhancing primary school enrolment in the quake-hit areas as it plans to enrol some 500,000 children by mid 2008. It would enrol 100 per cent of the students registered with schools before the quake and 30 per cent of those who never went to school.