MUZAFFARABAD, March 23: The People’s Party Azad Jammu and Kashmir (PPAJK) on Wednesday criticised non-governmental organisations for creating a ‘dependency syndrome’ among earthquake survivors and urged them to leave the area and let people get on with their normal lives.

“NGOs are making people in quake-hit areas lethargic by making them overly dependent on relief goods,” party’s former deputy chief organiser Shaukat Javed Mir said.

He also accused them of creating other social problems in earthquake-hit areas.

Speaking at a press conference here, he said: “They (the NGOs) offer rents 100 times more than the market value (in Muzaffarabad) and leave no room for homeless survivors to find a suitable accommodation for their families,” he said.

He blamed the Azad Kashmir government for the situation and said that it had failed to arrest the trend because of its “vested interests”.

He also accused the federal government of turning a blind eye to the AJK government’s inefficiency and the Azad Kashmir government of failing to maintain transparency in distribution of relief funds.

While acknowledging differences in the ranks of the PPAJK, he asserted that these differences would be resolved after intervention of the party’s chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, adding that the party would gain a landslide victory in the upcoming polls in the state.

He urged the federal government to quash “bogus cases against Benazir Bhutto”, Asif Ali Zardari and all political prisoners to pave the way for true democracy to flourish in the country.