Pakistanis capable of facing all challenges, says Musharraf
By Our Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Pakistan is capable of facing all challenges and there is no room for despondency, says President General Pervez Musharraf.
Addressing the second annual review meeting of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) here on Thursday, he criticised people who, according to him, were trying to create a sense of dejection, painting a ‘doomsday scenario’.
Recalling that some people had predicted that intense cold and epidemics would bring a new wave of death in the wake of the 2005 earthquake, he said: “We have proven that we have the potential to overcome calamity and we can face any challenge.”
Terming the level of achievement after the massive earthquake a miracle, he said: “We remained steadfast and applied Quaid-i-Azam’s principles of faith, unity and discipline and converted an adversity into multiple opportunities.”
The president said that a better than before infrastructure was redeveloped with sheer hard work of people combined with the support of public and private agencies, foreign donors and the armed forces. He called upon international community to cooperate in developing capacity of local staff to run modern health and education facilities efficiently.
President Musharraf ordered the provincial and district governments to develop and maintain modern facilities.
He said earthquake-resistant houses and clean tap water would help raise the quality of life of people in the area.
Erra chairman Altaf M. Saleem said that a housing assistance grant of about a billion dollars had been disbursed in less than two years. He said 92,000 quake-resistant houses had been completed while work on 250,000 others was in advanced stage.
He said everybody in the quake hit areas would have an earthquake resistant house by March 2008.
Resident Humanitarian Coordinator of the UN Jan Vandemoortele said what followed the 2005 earthquake was the best-ever example of civil and military coordination, one of the most effective relief operations and a tangible example of the power of international cooperation. “It has indeed been an elevating and enriching experience.”
He said the Early Recovery Plan of the UN received funding for 87 per cent of the planned budgets. It achieved over 85 per cent of targets in sectors such as education, health, water and sanitation, livelihoods and support to the vulnerable.
World Bank’s resident representative in Pakistan Yusupha Crockes termed the past two years’ achievements remarkable and said the biggest immediate challenge was to enhance reconstruction implementation capacity in terms of planning, design, procurement, construction and monitoring.
In the longer run, the broad challenge was to reduce the current high economic and human susceptibility to disaster shocks in the earthquake-hit areas.
Erra deputy chairman Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed presented sector-wise update on the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in the quake-hit region.
