BALAKOT, April 8: Earthquake survivors on Saturday were to mark six months since the disaster that killed more than 73,000 people, with reconstruction yet to start in most of the devastated area. In the northwestern town of Balakot, that rebuilding work is never even going to happen. Authorities said last week they will relocate the ruined city and have banned further construction because it lies directly on a fault line.

With around 90 per cent of once-scenic Balakot’s houses, schools and shops reduced to rubble, residents living in tents are asking what they are meant to do for the next five or so years while the new town is built.

“We are in limbo. What happens next?” said 40-year-old Abdul Waheed, who lost his mother, one of his daughters and his sister-in-law in the 7.6-magnitude quake on Oct 8.

Waheed’s jewellery store on the high street is one of about 10 shops in the entire city that survived the earthquake. But his house and other properties that he owns were all destroyed.

“Until they make the new city the government must give us earthquake-proof shelters so we can live there for a few years,” he added.

Other traders have built precarious temporary shops using timber, corrugated iron and in some cases plastic sheets made of candy wrappers, but they are surrounded by a wasteland of concrete debris.

A number of them held a protest march in Balakot after Friday prayers.

“We don’t want to move from here,” said sweet shop owner Abdul Razzaq.

“The government has never helped us — all the materials to rebuild came from the Red Crescent, Jamaat-ud Dawa (the political wing of the banned militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba) and some other aid groups.”

The government of the NWFP has yet to offer any plans or explain how people will survive if they cannot rebuild.

Since the quake, the United Nations has always said that after six months, emergency relief would end and reconstruction would begin. It was also the time the government gave to refugees in tent camps to return to their mountain villages.

The sound of hammers now rings out in those mountain villages and a few wooden framed shelters have started to spring up.

But Balakot has barely changed and in Muzaffarabad most of the rubble lies where it did six months ago. A body was recovered from the ruins a few days ago.

A group of lawyers marched through Muzaffarabad on Wednesday to demand that the second 25,000-rupee (416-dollar) tranche of compensation for survivors be paid quickly, and that the government unveil its plans for the area.

“We have waited for six months and they have done nothing,” shouted lawyer Khalid Raja, waving his arms in fury.

Altaf Saleem, chief of Pakistan’s Earthquake Rehabili-tation and Reconstruction Authority, says authorities have delayed the payments and the unveiling of their plans because they want to rebuild the area safely. “We are following a rigorous process which people don’t like. They just want the money and tell us they will build their homes,” he said.

“There are donor conditionalities that you do not distribute money unless you have made a damage assessment. We have started the process of assessment.”

Special aid teams are reaching out across the quake zone helping people to rebuild their houses, Saleem added.

“The government wants them to get the money, that they use it for building houses which are seismologically safe and that they are not in tents again this winter,” he said.

Meanwhile some quake survivors are using their business skills to fund their own rebuilding work.

Bashir Qadri used to sell groceries at his shop near Tanaga Adda market in Muzaffarabad’s shattered centre, but has converted it into a store selling corrugated iron sheeting.

“I changed my business from daily items to construction-related material because of the demand,” he said. “As far as food is concerned the NGOs and the government have been taking care of that.”—AFP