Three months on and still living in tents

THE October 8 earthquake may not have been predictable, but what was certainly predictable is the onslaught of harsh winter conditions in the quake-affected areas where an estimated two million people are still living in some 300,000 tents.

Already two infants died of pneumonia last week in the H-11 tent village where recent rains had made the winter in the capital colder. One dreads to think of the condition of those further up north where many tents are reported to have collapsed due to snow. Apart from the biting cold, another major problem is tent fires arising from the increasing use of stoves and open fires inside the tents to beat the cold.

No doubt tents are the usual immediate temporary shelters provided to people made homeless in big disasters, e.g., the December 2004 tsunami in Sumatra, Indonesia; the December 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran; and the January 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India. But tents, whether for a single family or community, are hardly the appropriate shelters for people to live through the kind of bitter winter that is common in the quake- affected region.

In Sumatra and Bam, the governments shifted the homeless from tents into more weatherproof transitional shelters within a month or so. In tropical Sumatra where rain is a common phenomenon, the government had shifted the homeless from tents into more weatherproof barrack-style quarters less than two months after the tsunami. In Bam, within a month or two after the earthquake the government shifted 155,000 homeless people from tents into semi-permanent prefabricated accommodation.

In Pakistan, soon after the tents were distributed with great difficulty in the quake-affected areas, they were deemed unsuitable for the harsh winters in the mountainous regions! Efforts were then made to retrofit and insulate the tents with tarpaulins (heavy-duty waterproof cloth pegged to the ground forming an A-shaped cover over the tent), plastic sheets and blankets. But as it is evident from a photograph last week of Kashtra camp tent village in Ghari Habibullah, the tarpaulins do not provide full-proof cover from rain and snow as the tents are still exposed on two sides as well as near the ground all round.

For the quake-hit areas that are between altitudes 5,000 to 7,000 feet, the government was supposed to have provided free of cost corrugated galvanized iron (CGI) sheets for the construction of transitional shelters. But judging by recent newspaper photographs which showed mostly tents that were snow-covered and rain-soaked, not many CGI sheets transitional shelters have been constructed.

Temporary and transitional shelters aside, do we have a clear-cut policy or strategy on permanent housing reconstruction and rehabilitation in the quake-hit areas?

The government has announced that it plans to start the permanent housing reconstruction programme in April by funding a self-help rebuilding effort through grants to individual affected families. According to the chairman of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA), 400,153 houses need to be reconstructed. However, Erra’s rebuilding plan is likely to face a couple of potential problems in its implementation.

It is obvious that the houses destroyed in the quake range from large concrete houses in urban centres like Balakot and Muzaffarabad to small hamlets in the rural mountainous regions. Obviously not only the materials but also the cost of rebuilding such different types of houses in different localities will vary.

Yet Erra has announced that a flat Rs175,000 grant will be given to all affected households to replace house destroyed or damaged (Rs25,000 initial grant, Rs125,000 to be given in the second phase, and an additional Rs25,000 as an incentive to those adopting quake resistance standards in house building as laid down by the government).

In an interview to Reuters last month, the Erra chairman said that a two-bedroom house with kitchen can be built at a cost of Rs175,000 using local materials and seismic-resistant design. He also said that the government would encourage people to use wood, mild steel and CGI sheets as these could resist earthquakes.

While these may sound like the kind of materials used for building houses in the rural areas, they hardly seem the kind of materials for house building in modern urban centres. According to some local architects, reinforced cement concrete and steel are the recommended materials for reconstruction of houses and other government buildings in such cities.

Apart from the apparent lack of choice available for people to choose the type of housing they want to be reconstructed, supplying the materials for rebuilding could pose another problem, especially since most access roads damaged by the quake are severely clogged up, what with fresh landslides caused by the snow and rain. Until now, provision of emergency supplies is still going on and this could lead to competition for scarce transport space when supplies are needed for reconstruction.

Yet another challenge is the ability of vulnerable people, especially women and the very poor, to receive the support that they need. Cultural and social structures for instance could work against equal access for widows and unmarried women. Rising costs of building materials may make it difficult for poorer families to afford to rebuild as cash-strapped survivors might be tempted to utilize some if not all the grants to survive, leaving them with few or no funds to reconstruct their homes.

Already, reports have surfaced about women survivors, specially widows with no adult male children, losing their property in the earthquake areas to other male family members. The security of land/property ownership also affect many other affected households who have resisted pressure to move down from high altitude areas only because their houses or land would be seized by others once abandoned.

Perhaps the government and Erra could learn some lessons from other reconstruction efforts in the region.

The Gujarat earthquake housing recovery programme (which aimed at rebuilding 215,255 and repairing 920,680 houses) as outlined in the 30-page policy document, the Gujarat Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Strategy, consists of five types of assistance/compensation packages.

The entitlement criteria included: the area where the house will be rebuilt (urban or rural), the type of structure (reinforced cement concrete frame structures or load bearing structures), the size in terms of square metres, whether it is single storey or multi-storey, etc. In addition, the compensation packages also differentiated among fully collapsed or demolished houses, damaged houses that need repair, and undamaged houses that need retrofitting or strengthening to better withstand future tremours.

Two other characteristics of the Gujarat housing recovery programme are worth noting. Firstly, material banks were set up by the government to enable the beneficiaries to get cement and steel at affordable prices. The government procured building materials at reduced price by directly negotiating with the manufacturers, and exempted them from sales tax.

Secondly, the Gujarat government sought to ensure the protection of women’s rights and entitlement by registering the house in the joint names of the husband and wife. The government also ensured that the housing entitlement was passed on to widows rather than any other male member of the family.

The rebuilding programme of the Bam earthquake that rendered 155,000 homeless, provided the people with the freedom to choose the model of a house from 12 available models and the contractor they want from more than 100 possible companies. Female-headed families composing of families which lost their male breadwinners in the earthquake were given special attention and assistance.

In the Indonesian Tsunami Human Settlements Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Strategy which targeted at rebuilding 127,000 houses, distinction was made between housing that was more than 50 per cent damaged (in which a scheme of reconstruction applied) and housing that was partially damaged or less than 50 per cent damaged (in which a scheme of rehabilitation and repairs applied).

The timing, pace, content and extent of reconstruction is supposed to be managed by the individual affected families who are given relevant information on alternative house type plans, construction costs and techniques. The cash grants are disbursed in tranches/construction phase (foundation for housing, core structure and finishing) and each tranche must be validated and signed off by the engineers assigned on the site by the local government.

In addition to housing, an equally important component of any reconstruction strategy after a disaster is a feasible livelihood revival and restoration programme. In Gujarat’s case a series of schemes for economic rehabilitation and livelihood restoration were announced.

Apart from credit supply for the self-employed and craftsmen, there were also schemes for the provision of work sheds, toolkits for artisans and craftsmen, setting up of handloom-handicraft parks and rural industrial centres, assistance for farm inputs and implements, assistance to small, medium and large industries, assistance to tourism units, traders and shop owners. Assistance for new industrial units established, for instance, included the grant of sales tax exemption or deferment for different periods/number of years depending on the type of investment.

For Pakistan’s earthquake affected areas, there seems to be little information available about livelihood restoration programmes there, apart from the fact that Khushali Bank has apparently devised a micro-finance policy to give soft loans for restarting businesses, agricultural and other economic activities. But how much of this assistance will reach the most needy remains to be seen.

Three months into the earthquake and we still seem focused on the relief aspect, ferrying emergency supplies to those affected. The task of rebuilding, no doubt a gargantuan task compared to recent disasters elsewhere, is nowhere in sight. Neither do we seem to have conceptualized a holistic and feasible rebuilding strategy.

If we do not act soon enough upon some medium-term plan, the second winter of 2006-2007 could well prove to be no better than the first winter of 2005-2006 for the homeless quake affected people.

A tailor-made foreign policy

INDIA says it is concerned by the oppression of the people of Balochistan. Pakistan seems to have taken offence at this show of concern. But consider it calmly. What is wrong in criticizing army action against unarmed civilians? Why should Pakistan mind it as interference, particularly when Pakistan itself maintains that it is equally concerned at the state of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir under Indian rule?

To be accurate, however, let’s remember that India doesn’t always like to interfere in Pakistan’s so-called internal affairs. Remember that there was a time when the entire world was, well, poking their noses, to use a favourite bureaucratese, in Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s quest to summarily get rid of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Indira Gandhi, then in opposition, had actually led the chorus of protests against what everyone knew was heading to be a judicial murder of one of South Asia’s most charismatic, if controversial, leaders.

And what did the Indian government of the day under Prime Minister Morarji Desai and with Atal Behari Vajpayee as foreign minister do? It looked the other way. And thus it allowed Tara Maseeh, the executioner, unhindered freedom to faithfully carry out the law of the land. Impressed with this policy of non-interference Gen. Zia decorated Morarji Desai with Pakistan’s highest civilian honour. If that was India-Pakistan bonhomie how many of us would be striving for it today?

Later, India stalled Saarc meetings at least twice, once because Gen. Musharraf had staged a coup against a democratically elected government in Pakistan, the second time when Nepal’s autocratic king had suspended parliamentary democracy. Musharraf’s coup was slammed by the Hindu right in India. King Gyanendra’s coup was applauded by the Hindu right in India.

What is puzzling, however, is not that India, the world’s most populous democracy, takes offence when democracy is raped in its neighbourhood. It becomes intriguing only when the political gestures acquire the tone and tenor of a charade and posturing. If, after all, it feels so strongly that a military ruler or a despotic king should not be the political head of a member state within Saarc, why doesn’t India continue to stick to its guns? Why is it supplying military hardware to a despotic king, to shore up democracy?

There are lots of logical problems in India’s approach with its neighbours. But let’s ignore the fact that the host of the first Saarc summit in 1985, Bangladesh’s Gen Ershad, was himself the leader of a military coup. However, if India still has serious and principled objections to what it sees as obstruction of the democratic process in its neighbourhood, then why does it keep changing its stance?

For example, after all the acrimony and feet-stamping demarches that came from New Delhi against the toppling of Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup, how did Gen. Musharraf suddenly become the right companion to ‘walk the high road to peace’ with Mr Vajpayee? An unlikely story is given as the reason for the change of heart. It seems a Pakistani tailor may have been responsible for the extra yard of friendship that proffered in favour of Gen. Musharraf.

What seems to have transpired is this. When Gen. Musharraf’s tailor delivered him a sherwani to slip into from his army fatigues, it was Prime Minister Vajpayee who pounced on it as an opportunity he had been waiting for to mend fences with the army strongman. As a result Mr Vajpayee became the first leader and remained the only one for some time, to greet a military dictator as a legitimate head of state.

So let’s be very clear. If India is seriously concerned, and not merely teasing and taunting Pakistan’s military establishment over the events in Balochistan, let’s hear a full-throated, loud and consistent show of concern from New Delhi for a hapless people of a Pakistani province.

In that case India should be equally prepared to allow for criticism by Pakistan over Kashmir, Gujarat, North East and some other sore issues. For years, our foreign ministries have been fooling their people with the help of a pliant media. How many times have we heard Indian spokesmen citing passages from Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International reports to slam Pakistan’s poor track record vis-a-vis its minorities.

Then on issues closer home, the same spokesman would reject Amnesty and Human Rights Watch as tools of Western interference. Ditto for Pakistan. Criticism of India’s Kashmir policy by these agencies is often touted as kosher by Islamabad, but discussion on the lot of Hindu and Christian minorities of Pakistan is dismissed as enemy propaganda.

It was a genial historian from Pakistan who, during a visit to India during the Vajpayee era, had made a gripping observation about the abuse of Christian minorities by the state government of Gujarat. “We too inflict torture and humiliation on our Christians as you do here in India,” the historian had told his hosts in Delhi. “The difference is that in India these outrages are carried out under the watch of parliamentary democracy, while in Pakistan we do it under martial law.” The noises about democratic rights in this or that province of India or Pakistan are just that and no more. All it takes is a well stitched sherwani to silence the critics, like the one Gen. Musharraf presented to Mr Vajpayee.

PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh’s fragile coalition government is shored up by the communist-led Left Front. But that does not deter him from taking on his Marxist detractors on matters of principle. One such principle is Dr. Singh’s keen interest and proximity with the United States. He even threatened to resign last November when West Bengal’s Marxist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya refused to provide his government’s support to the India-United States joint military exercise in West Bengal.

According to a report by rediff.com, not only did Dr Singh offer to resign but he also told Mr Bhattacharya that ‘defence matters decided by the centre can’t be overruled by the states’. Dr Singh also gave the West Bengal CM the example of Kerala where Indo-China joint military exercises were conducted unhindered. Dr Singh also issued a stern warning that the centre can impose president’s rule if a state does not cooperate in the country’s defence matters.

He made these remarks during a telephone conversation with Mr Bhattacharya, which took place before the exercise. “The prime minister shows guts when a major issue related to America comes up,” a senior government official in New Delhi told rediff.com.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Unholy acts

A MOSQUE illegally built along the rail tracks near the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and next to a shrine was pulled down by a law- enforcement agency a couple of months ago — after the structure had been completed.

Another mosque is now coming up on a small park along Korangi Road in Bhitai Colony. It was very innocuously started some three years ago by spreading out prayer mats on the grass. An illegal water connection was then obtained for ablution. After a couple of years, a square tent was pitched to test the mood of the authorities. When nothing happened for several months, walls were raised within the tent. Now the tent is being gradually peeled off, exposing the structure and challenging the authorities’ will and mettle.

It is not clear why officials have to wait for the consummation of an obvious anomaly before moving against it. There are rules for the construction of mosques, churches, temples and other places of worship. Those genuinely interested in building such places do follow the rules — buying or acquiring land legally and seeking NOCs from the relevant agencies. Apparently in this case it is the land mafia which is using the facade of a pious act to grab a plot. It is heartening to see that some people in the area have woken up to the issue and begun clamouring to have the park restored to its original status.

Encroachments are not confined to places of worship, as is evident from many other cases of encroachment in Karachi. Educational institutions, private hospitals, restaurants and hotels relentlessly encroach upon footpaths, roads and other public places. The Sindh governor’s orders last Wednesday for the removal of encroachments in the Empress Market area may have borne fruit and the pedestrians now could move about freely. But we have seen this before: Saddar has been cleared of encroachments many times in recent years, and very soon they return. No illegal acts can take place and no mafia can flourish without the patronage of officials, so this aspect needs to be looked into.

Parking and wedding

AFTER a ban on parking in front of the PIDC House following a bomb blast, the parking lot in the Bagh-i-Jinnah (the erstwhile Polo Ground), is crammed with cars on working days. Many office-goers in the vicinity have begun to park their cars there. Guests in the adjoining hotels also find it convenient to park their vehicles here. The parking fee waived earlier has been re-imposed, which is still half of what other such places charge. So it is an added attraction for the price-hike hit salaried class.

With the number of cars in the city multiplying at a high rate, any such convenience must be appreciated. However, when a minister or any other VIP is slated to attend a wedding in the adjoining baradari, the car and their owners are shooed away for the day. This denial of parking is a big disappointment for the lot’s users, as more and more VIP functions are held in the baradari.

As a goodwill gesture to Karachi’s harassed motorists, can’t ministers hold their functions elsewhere?

Indian cricketers

INDIAN cricket skipper Mithali Raj and her team had a wonderful day here last Wednesday when they beat Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup final and clinched their second successive title.

Posing right and left with the trophy and occasionally holding it up for the photographers, the jubilant young women would certainly have inspired cricket lovers in Pakistan. Earlier they had roundly beaten both Pakistan and Sri Lanka twice.

Despite their poor showing, the host team cannot be written off. Indeed there were glimpses of their potential as our bowlers and batswomen tried to do their best against teams that were clearly superior. The defeat of the Pakistan team can be attributed to lack of experience and international exposure.

The tournament could not generate much public interest for one very obvious reason — lack of audience since only women were allowed to see the matches and the TV channels could not telecast the event live.

But cricket enthusiasts would, however, be compensated for this deficit as the regular Indian team has begun their Pakistan tour. It is cricket between Pakistan and India that creates the strongest interest in the people of the two countries.

Fickle weather

BACK in the mid-80s, a senior journalist always used to carry his umbrella with him all the time. Called ‘doctor sahib’, his colleagues would joke about this. He would dismiss their comments, saying: “Mian, you won’t understand it. Karachi’s weather is unpredictable.”

One day when the ‘doctor sahib’ entered the newsroom, he was drenched from

head to toe. Apparently he had forgotten to bring along his umbrella that

day. When his colleagues looked at

him inquiringly, he smiled and triumphantly remarked: “Mian, didn’t I tell you that the weather of this city is unpredictable?”

The current winter hasn’t been so unpredictable this far, although the temperatures have been the lowest for nine years. A shower just after the new year began had washed the trees clean, and

the sun shines warmly and brightly during the day. It’s only in the evenings when

you enter the house, with its bare floors and draughts, that you miss the gas heaters so much in use up north.

— By Karachian

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com