PIRCHINASI (Azad Kashmir), Jan 19: Last year Mir Afsar was living in a tarpaulin tent and the weather was not so punishing. Today, he has moved to a proper shelter protected by metal sheets, but the weather has been unkind to him.

The first snowfall on November 12, hit his shelter in Danna Pirchinasi and he has been braving the biting cold since.

And the same is the story of almost every second person affected by the devastating earthquake of October 8, 2005, that killed more than 40,000 people in Azad Kashmir and damaged 300,000 houses.

As one moves higher, the snow-covered hills of Pirchinasi, 8,000 feet above sea level, are a pretty sight for visitors, but not for the quake survivors.

Their shelters have improved, but the temperature several degrees below freezing point even in the daytime, makes the living quite difficult. And there appears to be no relief in sight.

Hundreds of shelters in rows in Ehsas camp, Miratanolian down, present a different scene.

Sobia has an electric heater and a gas stove. Besides looking after her two-year-old brother Khurram, she also works on a sewing machine to help her father earn a decent living when they get a piece of land to build their own house.

She is among hundreds of landless people who had to move out of the nearby Ranjata village which started sliding after the quake.

Shelters, unlike tents, provide protection from rain, but the cold wind makes way through slits between the sheets used for walls and the roof and chills everyone to the bone.

“Khuram stands up in the night and cries because of the biting cold,” says Sobia. “It is very difficult to sleep”.

As one enters Azad Kashmir from the Kohala bridge and moves towards Muzaffarabad, which was worst hit by the quake – one sees life slowly returning to normal in the area which had been reduced to rubble in a few seconds. Rows and rows of tents on both sides along the Islamabad-Muzaffarabd road provide a glimpse of the ordeal of the people whose homes had been razed by the quake.

“About 35,000 people are still in 44 temporary camps,” says Sardar M. Siddique Khan who heads the State Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (Serra) as director general in Azad Kashmir. Hopefully, they would move out of camps to permanent houses by March this year, he told Dawn.

Reconstruction activities are in progress, but a substantial number of people are yet to start building their houses. They would not be able to do anything for another few months because they have been told that cement cannot muster enough strength in sub-zero temperature.

A survey of 125,000 families conducted by Serra reveals that 89,000 people are rebuilding their homes but about 41 per cent of them are not following building rules, says Mr Siddique who himself suffered a leg fracture in the earthquake.

He said another survey had been started to ascertain why the people were not following the set standards. He said it was not clear if these people were unaware of the codes; they were just not willing to accept them. The new survey would help to address the issue, he said.

He said the major problem being faced in the reconstruction work was the capacity and skills gap at the public and private levels. The AJK government can handle development projects of about Rs6 billion a year while reconstruction required an additional investment of about Rs35-40 billion per year and to handle that work was not a simple matter.

The skills gap is so acute that Erra issued ads for hiring three civil engineers three times, but the posts are still vacant.

One engineer who had been appointed left after one month for a better job, said Mr Khan.

He said that hundreds of educated youths migrated to Canada and other countries after the quake, further aggravating the problem. Besides, the demand for civil engineers, he says, had already increased because of construction activities in Pakistan and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

He said master plan for Muzaffarabad had been approved and announced. The AJK University campus, currently in prefabricated buildings, would soon be moved to Chattar about 25-km from Muzaffarabad. The central jail and police lines would be relocated to Rarha and other government offices would also be shifted to different places in and around the city.

He said the entire social and physical infrastructure had almost collapsed and the reconstruction plan aimed to rebuild it in three years. But now it appears it will take about five years.

One positive aspect of the whole exercise, he said, was that no epidemic or food crisis had hit the region after the quake – thanks to cooperation of people in Pakistan and abroad – and there was enough stock to meet any difficult situation this year.

He, however, conceded that 14 deaths had been reported because of diarrhoea. Besides people suffered from acute respiratory problem in the whole of the NWFP and AJK in the month of December.

He said that reconstruction activities had now picked up momentum and next year the situation would definitely be better. But people need to be educated that this is a seismological region and a volatile zone and, therefore, not suitable for big housing structures.