LAHORE, March 21: Pakistan faces a shortage of about seven million houses and the number will grow with rising population. This was revealed in a joint paper on ‘Low-cost houses in different regions of Pakistan’ presented by engineers AM Waliuddin, Nadir Mansoor and Dr Ataullah Maher at a technical session on the second day of the international conference on engineering and disaster management here on Wednesday.

Experts from Pakistan, Asia and the Pacific region presented their papers on engineering aspects of disaster management in their countries at four technical sessions of the conference.

Pakistani experts said the housing and works sector was an important sector of a country and a major parameter to evaluate the development of any nation.

They said the shortage of seven million houses could be met if about half a million housing units were built annually whereas the present average was much below due to heavy cost of the construction material.

They said the Oct 8 quake in Azad Kashmir and the NWFP had created a shortage of about half a million housing units in the area where the housing backlog was already rising at the rate of 270,000 units annually.

Pakistani environment expert Mumtaz Husain said commissions should be set up in every country of the region to inquire into causes, impacts, failures and success pertaining to previous quakes and recommend measures to mitigate the losses. Policies, plans and strategies should be made to cope with disasters, and engineers must be made active members of disaster and development teams.

Japanese expert Akihiko Hirotani discussed the methods employed by his country for disaster management.

He said because of the geographical conditions, Japan had been facing frequent disasters such as quakes, tsunami, typhoons, torrential rains and heavy snowfall.