MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 6: Due to slow process of financial help to rebuild houses in earthquake-hit areas, only five per cent of the houses, out of 27 per cent being rebuilt, may be completed when the snow starts falling. And the process has become more slow because of the new quake-proofing rules.
The task of rebuilding is daunting, even with $6.7 billion in aid pledges: more than 600,000 homes, 6,500 schools and 800 clinics and hospitals were destroyed by the quake, as well as over 3,700 miles of roads.
“The damage is more than was initially assessed,” said Altaf Saleem, chairman of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority. “Never in Pakistan’s history has so much construction happened in such a compressed timeframe.”
The new regulations require homes to be rebuilt using cement and steel, but survivors say the price of materials has tripled since the quake and are difficult to transport to remote villages.
World Bank’s representative Vandermoortele said the rules “erred on the side of being scientifically rigorous” rather than affordable. Oxfam, the British-based relief agency, said they “raised costs without guaranteeing housing that was safer than timber-based homes.”
The rules were laid down by Erra on advice from a local engineering consulting firm and to meet requirements of the World Bank, the main donor for house reconstruction.
Mr Saleem said the regulations would be eased to let villagers use timber frames on concrete foundations in the most inaccessible locations. He said most quake victims would have rebuilt their homes within a year, but reconstruction of the quake zone would span five years. Peter Fedon, country chief of the Asian Development Bank, said it would take at least eight years.
Shehad Shah and 15 relatives still live in their damaged home in Muzaffarabad. The cracks in the wall, plugged by old cloth and loose bricks, have widened since the earthquake.
Nearby Domal Road ends in thin air, the asphalt and land beneath it having plunged into the rushing Jehlum River 40 meters below.
“We’re stranded here. We have no money to buy new land and build another house,” said Mr Shah, 29.
Life in Muzaffarabad has assumed a degree of normality among partially cleared ruins.
Rubble and collapsed minarets no longer block the narrow alleys of the Medina Market. Crudely repaired stores are well stocked and do a brisk business. Across the city, children attend class at schools set up in tents and prefabricated buildings.
But city parks and hillsides are crowded with displaced families living in shacks or under canvas, and people pray in ruined mosques.
Families are waiting for compensation money and for the government to complete a city master plan and give the green light to rebuild.
Compensation claims and reconstruction are moving faster in rural areas where most quake victims live. Officials say 90 per cent of people have received more than half of the US$3,000 payment to help them build new homes.
But the cash has come too slowly to beat the winter. Raja Mohammad Nasim Khan, minister of reconstruction for Kashmir, said only 27 per cent of people in the region have started rebuilding, and only about five per cent would have finished homes by the time snows come.
Aurangzeb Abassi is among hundreds of villagers living in temporary shelters of bricks, corrugated iron and wood – often next to the concrete foundations of half-built homes.
Every other day Abassi travels 24 kilometres by bus to government headquarters in Muzaffarabad, hoping to press his claim for compensation money. He gets in line, his number written on in black marker pan on his left hand. It’s 5am and he’s no. 62.
“Instead of bowing our heads in front of these officials, it would be better if we bow our head to God. Then we might get something back,” he said.—AP
