PESHAWAR, Dec 7: The Pakistan People’s Party has demanded that the government should ensure participation of elected representatives in the rehabilitation of quake survivors and reconstruction of their towns, as the government alone cannot carry out such a colossal task.

Talking to Dawn, provincial PPP president Rahimdad Khan said the government had failed to act in time to save people’s lives.

How could those who had failed to rescue people trapped in the debris be expected to carry out the work of rehabilitating the victims who were facing severe cold in tent villages, he added.

On his return from London, where he had gone to attend the PPP central executive committee meeting, he said the PPP had launched the Bhutto Shaheed Foundation, a party welfare wing, to work in education, health and social welfare sectors.

The foundation, he said, had a comprehensive programme for setting up vocational and scientific institutes, hospitals and universities across the country.

He said the Oct 8 earthquake was a national tragedy and its growing socio-economic and psychological impact needed to be handled with national spirit rather than by the government alone. Mr Khan said: “The establishment does not trust even its hand-picked civilian rulers to supervise the rehabilitation work in the quake-hit areas”.

Mr Khan said PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto could have reached Pakistan after the Oct 8 quake, but she had refused to politicise the tragedy.

He said Ms Bhutto would soon be among the masses and she was waiting for a green signal from the PPP central committee for the move. He said the rulers had failed to control the growing unemployment, lawlessness and price hike during their six-year tenure.

He said the general people had lost purchasing power owing to the pro-capitalist and ill-conceived policies of the government, which, conversely promoted the crime ratio across the country.