October 07, 2007	Sunday	Ramazan 24, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 6: Two years down the road since the October 8 earthquake, the results of effective coordination among the government, UN agencies and the civil society are becoming visible.

As one of the leading UN agency working on disaster response and management, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been instrumental in supporting the efforts of the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) to “build back better” with interventions that range from restoring livelihoods, rebuilding governance structures and improving capacity in disaster risk reduction, a press release issued by the UNDP said on Saturday.

UNDP’s response has been geared towards strengthening of existing governance structures to be better equipped for earthquake recovery and aid coordination.

It has been engaged in building the capacities of the local government by providing 524 prefabricated fully-functional government offices so that the government is able to perform its functions effectively.

The government’s key depart-ments such as the land and revenue departments have been provided with 160 containers for storage of revenue records and 400 Patwaris (land record officials) have been trained in restoration and improvement of land records.

Coupled with this critical hardware support is the capacity development of 360 government personnel in ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’, which includes the staff of Erra, Provincial Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (Perra), State Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (Serra) and District Reconstruction Units (DRU).

Capacity building interventions include disaster preparedness trainings across all development sectors like education, environment, health services and local governance.

The earthquake played havoc with the production base of the local population, destroying livelihoods in both rural and urban areas. To address this critical need, the UNDP launched a comprehensive livelihood programme aimed at restoring the standard of living and reducing dependency on relief aid.

In collaboration with UN partners, the UNDP revitalised and strengthened 969 community organisations and mobilised 3,000 activists to participate in livelihood activities.

Ms Amna from AJK, one of the beneficiaries of the UNDP projects, was appreciative of the efforts of the UN and stated that the provision of wheat, maize seeds and fertiliser helped her to enter into an income generating business and as a result she was able to buy books for her children.

This is the voice of one beneficiary of the various programmes operational in the earthquake-affected areas.

As in the other sectors, the earthquake negatively impacted the environment. To mitigate this, the UNDP supported the distribution of 265,500 forest plants among community members for reforestation and set up 22 nurseries in the earthquake-hit areas.

Given the large scale response and the involvement of many donors and agencies in the response, the UNDP with its key coordinating agency — Economic Affairs Division — set up the Development Assistance Database (DAD) under its aid coordination project to track funds received. The DAD currently tracks earthquake as well as regular development assistance and is accessible to the public at www.dadpak.org. At present it is tracking 402 earthquake-related projects and 619 regular assistance projects.

The aid coordination project is now moving beyond the data collection towards the data analysis by upgrading reporting tools to generate donor and sector profiles.

The UNDP played an important role during the relief phase, focusing its efforts on meeting the most urgent needs of the displaced populations and on developing the government’s capacity to manage the national and international response.