MANSEHRA: Quake-hit people still living in makeshift houses
By Nisar Ahmad Khan
MANSEHRA, Oct 6: On the second anniversary of Oct 8, 2005 earthquake, over 50,000 survivors of Balakot and Garlat are still living in makeshift houses while landowners of the proposed site for a new city in Bakryal have refused to sell their land to the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra), Dawn has learnt.
Shabina Bibi, a mother of three, had lost her husband, the sole breadwinner of the family, and a son in the calamity. The family, still traumatised by memories of the tragedy, is living without basic amenities. Her steel-sheet house is without a boundary wall in Mangal Mohallah of Balakot.
Shabina cries for the lost of her loved ones and shortage of food and money.
Narrating her ordeal she said: “Except Allah there is no one to help me or my family. I weep during iftar and sehri when my youngest son Atif, who was born after the tragedy, cries for the feed and I have no food for him.”
She said the government had paid stipend for some months after the tragedy, but it was later withdrawn.
She said the government after declaring Balakot red-zone had announced that a new Balakot city would be constructed in Bakryal for earthquake survivors. “Two years have passed, but even the foundation of the new city is not laid,” she added.
Like Shabina, thousands of families in red-zone Balakot and Garlat, who had lost their breadwinners in the devastating earthquake, are facing hardships and waiting to be settled in the new Balakot city.
The government has banned concrete reconstruction in Balakot and Garlat because they are situated on an active fault line.
President Pervez Musharraf had on May 20 laid the foundation stone of the new Balakot city to be built at an estimated cost of Rs13.5 billion.
But after the ceremony, landowners and residents of Bakryal, the site for the new city, refused to sell their land to Erra and took out protest demonstrations against the government’s decision.
They claimed that resettlement of the affected families from Balakot and Garlat in Bakryal would displace 25,000 people already living there.
They said they would rather die than to vacate their land.
Merhfazon Bibi, an old woman from Bakryal, told Dawn: “The government wants to deprive us of our land forcibly.” She said that it was illogical to displace the settled people to settle other affected people.
Munsif Khan of Bakryal appealed to President Pervez Musharraf to let them live in their ancestral land and said: “We will never give our land and houses to the Erra for the establishment of the city.”
He said it was an unjust act and the people of Bakryal would resist any such move.
The Mansehra district revenue department, which had been given Rs1.48 billion to acquire 11,436 kanals of private land and demolish houses located in Bakryal, has failed to acquire even 25 per cent of the land.
Revenue department sources said that 4,160 kanals of forest land had already been acquired. The new Balakot city will be built at 15,596 kanals of land.
Two years have passed, but earthquake survivors are still waiting for the promises to be kept and their lives to be rebuilt while the government assurance to redress their grievances and hardships is yet to be met.
