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| October 20, 2006 | Friday | Ramazan 26, 1427 |
‘Garden city’ struggles even a year after quake
BAGH, Oct 19: The life in the town of Bagh is yet to return to normal even one year after it was hit by a devastating quake. Each morning, traders head for their shops, labourers to construction sites and workers to their offices. But there is no feeling of normalcy in one of the largest towns of Azad Kashmir where an estimated 70-80 per cent of houses were destroyed in the earthquake, IRIN, the UN information unit reports.
Because of delay in finalisation of an ambitious reconstruction plan for Bagh — a town of around 100,000 people located 90 km from AJK capital Muzaffarabad, and disputes among stakeholders, people are not getting no-objection certificates for construction of their houses.
As a consequence, makeshift shelters are visible everywhere and the city, known as the most picturesque area of Kashmir, offers sight of heaps of rubble.
But there is yet another aspect of the tragedy. In its open areas streets and around its tin shacks, few children are seen playing. This sight is extremely unusual in a part of the world where six was the average number of children in each household and roads and open spaces are all too often their playgrounds.
“My house is like a graveyard. My husband and three children died in the quake. Now there is just me and my six-year-old daughter Attiya. She is still traumatised and does not play like ordinary children,” said Zeenat Mehmood, 30.
In many villages of the AJK, a new birth is celebrated by the entire community. “We distributed sweets, even though my wife given birth to a girl. Usually it is only for boys that we celebrate in this fashion. But now, all children are welcome into this world; their laughter brightens our lives,” says Nawaz Ahmed, 28, from a village around 10 km from Bagh.
The village had lost at least 35 children, including Nawaz’s five-year-old son.
Same is the story everywhere. In Badhiara, a pretty village located about 20 km south of Muzafarabad, 49 out of 50 victims were children. In Muzaffarabad, half of the city’s school-going children were killed. Figures from other towns and villages worst hit by the quake look very similar.
Many of the children who survived are still traumatised, with lack of expert care or counselling available to them after the quake. Many are afraid of going to school; screams and cries of dying classmates still haunt them, and others refuse to sleep indoors, despite chill creeping into the October air as winter approaches.
The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) began work in July to rebuild 6,300 schools it estimated were destroyed by the quake. Now it believes that the work may not be completed in another three years, but has set a target of completing 25 percent of proposed new schools by 2007.—PPI
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