PESHAWAR, Nov 3: With the number of quake-stricken people in two shelter homes in Peshawar on the rise, the provincial government has been working out a plan to reunite families separated by the Oct 8 disaster.

Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani has issued instructions to the social welfare department for this purpose.

Sources said that about 167 victims had been registered at the shelter home in the Hayatabad township and 70 at the relief centre located on Charsadda Road.

Initially, the government had planned to reserve the Hayatabad shelter for orphans and widows. Since no orphan or widow was registered there, therefore the government ordered to open the facility to all survivors.

“We now have been providing lodging and boarding facilities to 167 people and are expecting many more,” district officer Muhammad Bashir Khan of the social welfare department said.

He pointed out that with the shifting of 167 persons from hospitals the burden on local healthcare centres had been reduced to a great extent. There are 50 children, 16 of them injured, among these 167 inmates in the Hayatabad shelter.

The chief minister visited both shelter homes on Wednesday and issued orders for their effective functioning. The two centres have since been provided with one ambulance each.

The chief minister asked the social welfare department to help reunite the quack-hit families that had been separated as some of their members had been brought to Peshawar and others were living in tents in some other city. “We expect some vehicles will be given to us soon. It will be easier for us to reunite the broken families then,” Mr Bashir Khan said, adding that the plan to reunite families would be implemented soon after Eid.

He said alternative places had been acquired to accommodate the quake-affected people in case the existing two shelter homes were filled to capacity.

At the shelter home on Charsadda Road, established in the Provincial Institute for Teachers Education, at least 70 people have been registered.

“We are treating the injured as well as their attendants as the affectees because as all of them have been dislocated,” said Shamroz Khan, in charge of the shelter.