MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 3: The AJK government Camps Management Organisation (CMO) has started shifting nearly 167 families from a public park to a new site along the bank of River Jhelum here on Tuesday.

“We have established a new camp near Thuri where tents have been erected for survivors,” CMO commissioner Sardar Nawaz Khan told Dawn as the shifting began from the camp established in Jalalabad park near the official residences of the AJK president and prime minister.

The CMO had in the meanwhile also asked the Board of Revenue to arrange alternate pieces of lands for the landless survivors, he said.

Mr Khan said that the families were vacating Jalalabad camp willingly and his organisation was meeting the shifting expenses.

The official was alluding to resistance in the past by survivors living in the Jalalabad camp against their eviction.

The Jalalabad public park, which was developed at a cost of around Rs1.5 million, turned into a major tent village for survivors, many of them from suburban areas, soon after the quake.

Shortly afterwards, the authorities had initiated efforts to vacate the park reportedly to construct prefabricated structures on it to meet the growing problem of accommodation for government officials but strong resistance put up by survivors compelled them to shelve the plan.

However, the camp shrank in March this year after hundreds of survivors were repatriated from it to their mountain villages as the government made it clear that compensation money for damaged houses would be provided to owners only in their native areas.

Camp manager Syed Maqbool Shah said that the camp’s mosque, donated by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a private school, being run with the help of an NGO, and its dispensary had also been shifted to the new location.

Mr Shah, who was supervising the shifting operation, said according to his information the government wanted to revive the public park which was why the shifting was taking place.

The new site, he claimed, had been chosen by the survivors themselves after being shown four different spots.

Jamal Deen’s family was among those 70 which moved to the new place on Tuesday.

“We are leaving this place because they (officials) say the government needs it,” said the 48-year-old survivor from Pathyali village as he loaded his withered goods as well as a bundle of bushes on a mini truck.

Shafqat Shah, a survivor from Bandi Saman village on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, said he felt an attachment with the park where he had spent almost one year. Mr Shah said his family would be shifted tomorrow.

Amjad Shah expressed his disliking for the government decision, saying he was leaving unwillingly. “The CMO is sending us there against our wishes,” he said, as his wife and three children looked on.

Similarly, Ms Safia also voiced concern about safety of minor children in the riverside camp.