SALAMABAD (occupied Kashmir): Zariefa Begum and her family have been living in a tin shack since a giant earthquake swallowed their home a year ago.

Now they fear the temporary shelter in a sea of maize fields will become their permanent house.

“Having a new home is a distant dream,” the 35-year-old woman, a mother of seven, told AFP in this dusty hamlet of Salamabad, 106 kilometres from Srinagar.

It was one of nearly 150 villages devastated by the powerful earthquake on October 8 in occupied Kashmir, the Himalayan region already wracked by a freedom movement.

Some 1,300 people died in two poverty-ridden border districts of Uri and Tangdar in occupied Kashmir and another 73,700 on the Pakistani side in the 7.6-strength temblor.

Biting winds are now sweeping down from the mountains in a sign of the fast approaching harsh Himalayan winter.

Aid agencies say nearly 50,000 people in occupied Kashmir will have to spend their second winter in temporary tin sheds and flapping tents. Others will have wind whistling through houses with gaping cracks.

“Very little reconstruction has taken place in the quake-ravaged areas,” said Shafat Hussain, Secretary of Global Greenpeace, a local non-governmental organisation working in the region.

“Rough estimates indicate nearly 50,000 will have to spend coming winters in tents and tin-shacks,” he said.

The quake razed around 22,500 houses in occupied Kashmir alone, according to a survey by ActionAid International, a Johannesburg-based group. All of Salamabad’s 250 homes were damaged or destroyed, displacing about 1,200 people.

Nearly all victims have received 40 per cent of the promised Rs100,000 for reconstructing their homes. Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has said the remaining 60 per cent amount would be released this month.

But in Salamabad, and elsewhere in the quake-hit area, residents, many of whom have not yet received the full payment, say the money is not enough.

Zariefa Begum’s family said rebuilding is expensive, with building materials costing 400 per cent more than elsewhere in occupied Kashmir due to the isolation which makes transportation of goods very costly.

“With our meagre income we can’t even think of rebuilding our house,” said Begum, bouncing her 13-month-old son Parvaiz on her lap outside the shed.

But Zariefa Begum and her labourer husband are just thankful their family’s lives were spared by the quake’s devastation.

Two of their children, Ishfaq Ahmed, 3, and Parvaiz, had a miraculous escape, pulled alive from rubble after four hours of digging with shovels and bare hands by other family members.

Parvaiz was only a month old at the time.

Others were not so fortunate. Kismat Bibi, 42, lost her husband along with her home where she lived with her five children.

“Now, I will never own a house. That dream will never come true. This is my permanent home now,” Bibi said, pointing to her ramshackle shed, as her two small children sat by her side.

Like others, Bibi said government aid was too meagre and small for them to build a permanent house.

Parvez Ahmed, a government engineer and one of the few in Salamabad to have rebuilt his house, said the government should increase the payments so everyone in the village could have a decent permanent dwelling.

“I’m a government employee. I had some savings with which I managed to construct a small house,” he said, adding others did not have enough income as they were labourers.—AFP