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| July 18, 2006 | Tuesday | Jumadi-ul-Sani 21, 1427 |
Quake victims feel marginalised, abandoned
ISLAMABAD, July 17: A large number of October 8 quake survivors have been denied their rightful share in compensation for reconstruction of their destroyed houses, as a vast majority of them feels cheated by the federal and provincial governments.
During a recent visit to some of the worst quake-hit areas like Balakot, this reporter found a number of survivors complaining massive corruption in the release of instalments.
While the second instalment has been released to the survivors in the peripheral areas, the inhabitants of proper Balakot, Balakot bazaar and Garlat will get compensations after their complete relocation at Bakrial some 20 kilometres downward.
Mansehra District Nazim Sardar Yusuf told Dawn on telephone that a committee will soon sort out around 15,000 applications and release funds to the deserving people.
He said a total of 6,000 houses will be constructed in the new Balakot town for which Nespak was preparing a feasibility study and town planning. He said civic amenities like schools, hospitals etc were being planned for the population. Meanwhile, several survivors complained that most of the compensation cheques of Rs25,000 in Mansehra, Batagram and Abbottabad districts had been issued to the undeserving people and the second instalment of Rs75,000 transferred through banks had also left thousands of survivors high and dry.
As a result, a large number of deserving cases have either been ignored or shelved without assigning any cogent reason.
The complainants feel that the conditions set for the construction of houses were not possible to be met and they may lose their right to receive the second and third instalment of funds.
A good number of survivors claimed that their names had been deleted from the lists of second instalment and undeserving people were issued compensations.
Several survivors, who were injured and had to leave their areas for admission to the hospitals or search for a modest living elsewhere have been left out as unregistered and thus may not get compensation.
In one such case, a retired teacher, Abdul Bari, a resident of Pori (Upper), Balakot, with his two foot fingers amputated, has not been issued second instalment of Rs75,000, as his name has been struck off the first list.
When this correspondent contacted the official concerned, he told him that the cheque had been issued in the name of his brother but they failed to find him, as the victim was the only son of his parents.
Similarly, the heads of a number of families were not considered for compensation even in the second survey despite that they were promised a revision of their cases. These cases relate to such families’ heads who lived in the joint families though in independent houses.
Another anomaly, which has a telling effect on the survivors, is that the government has not issued maps of the promised quake- resistant house structures, which could delay the construction process.
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