PESHAWAR: Despite the availability of sufficient funds provided by the USAID, the Provincial Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Settlement Authority has failed to compensate the owners of 774 houses destroyed in the militancy-hit Malakand division a decade ago, claim sources.

The sources told Dawn that those house owners, mostly the residents of Swat district, have submitted compensation forms to the PaRRSA after verification by the relevant authorities and people but the PaRRSA overseen by the Provincial Disaster Management Authority is delaying them payments.

They said the compensation to be paid to those people was estimated to be around Rs220 million and the PaRRSA had Rs419 million in its account under the head of compensation as provided by the United States Agency for International Development.

PaRRSA delaying payments to owners of 774 damaged houses over ‘procedural lacunas’

The sources said after the extensive military operation against militants in the region in 2009, the World Bank carried out a ‘sector wise damage need assessment’.

They said the assessment report suggested that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa required Rs86 billion for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the militancy-hit areas.

The report also said 10,788 houses were damaged, mostly fully damaged.

The USAID is giving Rs400,000 for completely damaged houses each and Rs160,000 for partially damaged ones each.

The sources said until 2014, Rs2.27 billion was paid to the owners of 10,021 houses as compensation, while not a single penny had been given to them since but the remaining 774 people had been pushed from pillar to post to get compensation.

They said many of them had also gone to the courts demanding of the PaRRSA to release them compensation.

“My house was completely damaged during the military operation,” a resident of Buner district told Dawn requesting anonymity fearing delay in payment.

He said he rebuilt three rooms and a kitchen in his house at the cost of Rs1 million.

The resident said despite the lapse of 10 years, the government had yet to pay him Rs400,000 though it was too meagre compared to the property damages he faced during the period when Malakand division was literally ruled by the Taliban militants.

“We filled a form for compensation given by the PaRRSA through the district administration before getting it signed by prayer leader (imam) of the local mosque, patwari, assistant commissioner, deputy commissioner and the relevant army major and submitting to the PaRRSA.

“However, the PaRRSA refused to pay compensation asking for attaching a covering letter from the relevant army colonel. We complied with the instructions but the PaRRSA is still playing delaying tactics,” he said.

The resident also said all militancy-affected people had opened bank accounts on the instructions of the PaRRSA to get compensation, but the payments had yet to be made.

MPA Jaffar Shah from Swat told Dawn that most militancy-hit people were poor, who had been denied compensation for 10 years due to the inefficiency of the PaRRSA.

“I raised the issue in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly time and again but the government didn’t move,” he said.

The lawmaker said the USAID, too, had expressed concern about the PaRRSA’s inefficiency and called for the immediate payment of compensation to militancy victims.

When contacted, PDMA director general Mohammad Khalid said ‘procedural lacunas’ were involved in the processing of almost all compensation cases.

He however said the authority was making efforts to simplify the procedure for early payments to the compensation applicants.

Mr Khalid, who recently assumed the office, also confirmed that the USAID had asked his organisation to ensure the early payment of compensation to the militancy-hit people in Malakand division.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2017