October 14, 2006	Saturday	Ramazan 20, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 13: The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) has expressed readiness to present its accounts to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee for audit.

Erra Deputy Chairman Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed told a media briefing at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat here on Friday that although the authority’s accounts were already undergoing continuous audit by three parties, it had no qualms about presenting them to the PAC.

The opposition had claimed recently that there were numerous complaints of massive corruption and misappropriation of funds against Erra and demanded that its accounts be made auditable before the PAC.

Lt-Gen Ahmed claimed that 95 per cent of the victims of last year’s earthquake had been provided transitional abodes, 45 per cent had started reconstruction of their houses in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and 20 to 25 per cent in the NWFP.

Most of the newspapers and television channels have claimed recently that no more then 40 to 50 per cent people of the affected areas have been able to erect shelters through their own resources or with the help of non-governmental organisations.

The Erra official said 10,000 pre-fabricated houses would be provided by the Saudi government, of which 4,000 would be provided to the earthquake survivors in Balakot.

When asked about asking the survivors in Balakot to stay there till a new town was built while seismic reports had declared the current location dangerous, he said it was up to the provincial government to decide about shifting the population and affected people had been allowed only to live in quake-resistant pre-fabricated houses.

He said Balakot would be developed as an eco-friendly tourist resort and its inhabitants would be allowed to retain the ownership rights of their land and continue tourism-related trade.

Lt-Gen Ahmed said the draft of the new town’s plan prepared by the National Engineering Services (Nespak) would shortly be submitted to the NWFP government for evaluation, while the process of engaging a town builder had begun.

He said the government was forced to change the eligibility criteria for sustenance allowance from three-child to five-child families as it had funds to pay 250,000 people Rs3,000 monthly for six months but one million people had applied.

He said most of the compensation money had been released after resurvey of damaged houses barring some exceptional cases.

He said 22 of the 67 officials in the authority were from the armed forces, whereas its consultants had been hired by various donor agencies and Erra was not paying them.

He said Erra did not give any contract to an NGO but all projects of such organisations were cleared by the authority.

He said no commercial loans had been written off on Erra’s recommendations.

He claimed all stakeholders were taken on board while making Erra’s policies.

He said the authority’s non-development expenditure was Rs176 million and development expenditure Rs32 billion.

A document released by Erra says that it took four years in rebuilding of 85,000 houses when 441,000 people were displaced by Hurricane Mitch in central American countries in 1998; in Gujarat, India, after the earthquake of 2001, 113,000 houses were rebuilt in the first two years; and five per cent of permanent houses could be rebuilt after Iran’s 2003 earthquake in one year.