KARACHI, Oct 7: Zulfiqar Shah was luckier than many that when the October 8 earthquake destroyed his house in Battal, one of the worst-hit areas in the Mansehra district, nobody was in. He was in Karachi, living in a rented house in a Korangi locality and driving taxi for a living.

The house was packed with household goods, including the dowry items his wife had brought along years before, which were crushed under the heavy mud-and-timber roof.

Later, when he learnt that the Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Authority was distributing cheques to the quake survivors, he also rushed there in the hope to receive the small amounts of compensation and salvage his household articles. While leaving, he handed over his taxi to a driver on daily rental. Living next to the rubble of his house, Zulfiqar waited for a whole month for the Erra-appointed team of the land revenue department to visit the place for a survey and documentation. They did not turn up. He decided to return to Karachi to his family consisting of the wife and four girls, the eldest being 11.

“When I was in Abbottabad, about 70 kilometres from my hometown, I received a telephone call that the survey team had arrived. I was too exhausted to return. So, I gave up the plan to seek compensation,” says Zulfiqar, a thin mustached man in his mid-thirties. He still nurses the hope that his brother, working with an NGO in Mansehra, will one day succeed in getting the compensation money, though he is no longer much eager for it.

Syed Ali Akbar Shah from Hattian Bala, some 30 kilometres from Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir, says he has lost several close relatives in the earthquake. When his ancestral home collapsed, his sister-in-law died in it. He flew there and brought along children of some of the dead relatives. He has not received any compensation for the loss of his house. But for it he doesn’t blame anyone.

“I heard that Rs25,000 cheques were being issued, but I said to myself who will spend 10-15 thousand rupees to get just Rs25,000. I know many people who did go there but received nothing because of the complicated method of distribution of cheques,” says Mr Shah, adding: “One man, Riaz, who was there, received Rs70,000, came to Karachi and set up a PCO. He is earning enough to support his family here and doesn’t want to go back for more money.”

Similar are stories of many families which cannot live back in their homes for lack of job opportunities but cannot abandon them for nostalgic reasons. The same feelings hamper the government’s rehabilitation plans in the earthquake-hit areas as people do not want to move away from their devastated villages and towns that experts say are vulnerable to earthquakes.