ATTOCK, Oct 7: Ten-year-old Mohammad Javed says that, unlike victims his age, he has never had nightmares about the Oct 8, 2005 earthquake that killed his mother in their Muzaffarabad residence.
“But I see my mother in my dreams quite frequently. She tells me that she is very worried that our family has been separated. While I live and study at Aashiana, my two sisters have been sent to an orphanage in Haripur,” says Hindko-speaking Javed who is one of the hundreds of orphans at the Attock-based rehabilitation centre that seems to have run into problems following a somewhat unexplained withdrawal of government support from the non-governmental organisation tasked to run it.
While Javed’s life has been needlessly caught in the web of the subcontinent’s politics –- his father lost his life as a freedom-fighter in Indian Kashmir long before the earthquake -– most children at Aashiana say what they simply want is an early reunion with their lost relatives, provision of proper education and health facilities and a promise of a decent future.
“I have only two sisters from my immediate family living in the world. I have seen them only once in all these months,” says Javed, who was at his seminary on the morning of Oct 8, 2005.
Run by a faith-based organisation, the seminary was not affected by the deadly temblor that otherwise razed most government educational institutions in Azad Kashmir and four districts of NWFP to the ground, leaving between 17,000 to 18,000 students dead.
Over 42,000 children lost their parents in the earthquake, according to the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority. Analysts feel certain that if the orphans are not helped to slowly get on their feet, widely shared apprehensions of a ‘generation loss’, with over 75,000 killed by the earthquake itself, may well materialise.
Fearing that orphans from the earthquake might fall prey to human traffickers, the government barred the adoption of children and decided to establish special shelters, some in partnership with NGOs.
“The ministry of social welfare and Khubaib Foundation, an NGO, signed an agreement about the financial needs of Aashiana. It was decided that both the government and the NGO would provide the funds to jointly run the rehabilitation centre for poor women and orphans. But not a single rupee has been made available to us by the government,” complains Ajaz Ahmad, project director of Aashiana, where children wear proper school uniforms and shy smiles, trying to conceal what they may inwardly be feeling about being rent asunder from their families.
He says a large number of children, including girls, were lately bundled off to a government-run SOS village.
“A girl recently got back to us. She says that she was made to live under appalling conditions at the SOS village,” he says.
Government officials at the rehabilitation centre not only refuse to identify themselves but also decline to say why government support is being suddenly withdrawn and the orphans being inconsiderately shifted to other special shelters.
However, the Erra chairman, Altaf Saleem, says that it has been decided in principle by the government that orphans from the earthquake should live with their relatives in the areas they are from.
“It has also been broadly decided that those orphans who do not have living relatives will be sent to government-run SOS villages,” he explains.
According to psychiatrist Dr Wasif Ali Syed of the Pakistan Association of Mental Health, an NGO that provided much-needed counsel to the earthquake victims immediately after the tragedy, it is best if the orphans live with their relatives.
“But the most important thing is that the orphans should not be made to feel that they face an uncertain future. They have plenty of time to brood over their plight and gnawing doubts about their welfare will allow the psychological wounds caused by the earthquake to fester,” he says.
Dr Syed makes out a strong case for provision of sustained psychiatric help to the orphans wherever they live. He says adoption of orphans by childless couples is a good idea, but hastens to add that implementation is fraught will all sorts of difficulties.
Like the somewhat baffled children at Aashiana, most of the 42,000-plus orphans affected by the Oct 2005 earthquake could do without the bureaucratic dysfunction that has so far marred the process of their rehabilitation, tall claims by Erra notwithstanding. All they clearly need is thoughtful protective care, without being repeatedly reminded of their loneliness and vulnerability consequent upon the loss of their parents.
