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MANSEHRA, Feb 18: Earthquake victims in the Paras and Sacha Bela areas of Kaghan valley are still living under the open sky in chilly weather for five day since the natural calamity hit Kawai and Hungari union councils.
This state of affairs is attributed to slow pace of the relief operation due to the negligence of the authorities concerned. When this reporter visited the affected areas on Tuesday, it was evident that the tall claims being made by the authorities concerned and the political figures of the area did not match with the situation there.
The population of Hungari union council is about 20,000 while that of Kawai union council is 13,000, where hundreds of houses have been destroyed or partially damaged.
In Bela Sacha area of Hungari and in Paras area of Kawai, a number of families are compelled to live under the open sky in the chill of winter, as a little relief has been provided to them.
The partially-damaged houses have become so fragile that the inmates hesitate to enter them fearing their collapse. Dozens of other families have migrated down to Balakot and other areas for the same reason.
This reporter found a large number of tents and other relief items stored in the building of a partially-damaged hotel in Paras. According to the victims, these were not distributed among them for unknown reasons.
Police were standing guard on the entrance of the hotel and quake victims were queuing up outside for relief items. It was learnt that the main reason for this delay in distribution was a tug of war between different political groups of the area that wanted to use relief work for their political gains.
Hungari union council Nazim Syed Munir Hussain Shah told Dawn that 46 villages of the union council had been affected in the quake where dozens of houses were demolished and at least 530 were partially damaged.
He said that in Bela Sacha, about 500 families were still living under the open sky and the authorities had distributed only 10 tents, 50 blankets and 50 bags of flour among them.
MEETING: In the meanwhile, DCO Hussain Zada Khan and district Naib Nazim Syed Abdulber Shah Sherazi reached Paras and held a meeting with the Hungari Nazim and other elders of the areas.
Sajjad Ahmad Paracha, Nazim of Inayatabad union council stressed participants of the meeting to shun politicking in this situation and distribute the relief items. Then the DCO ordered to distribute the goods stored in the partially-damaged building of the hotel. But his order was not carried out.
While travelling between Kawai and Paras, this reporter found big fissures and cracks at different points caused by the earthquake in the Mansehra to Naran and Jalkhad road. It was recently constructed at a cost of billions of rupees by the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO).
The EDO (education) informed in Paras that over 12 primary, middle and high schools for boys and girls had been collapsed or partially damaged in Paras, Kund, Binjo, Katha, Sawan, Baila Sacha, Ratta Nalla, Dheri, Moum Chatti and Chontian.
Victims claim that the central, provincial and the district governments were deceiving them as their tall claims about provision of relief were limited to press statements only.
They said Mufti Kifayatullah of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal had visited the area and promised to help accelerate the relief operation, but nothing practical had been done.
Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani had sent his two ministers Sardar Idrees and Asif Iqbal who announced Rs100,000 each for the dead and Rs20,000 each for the injured. But so far people had not received a single penny, they said.
They said district Nazim Syed Ahmad Hussain Shah, Balakot tehsil Nazim Syed Junaid Ali Qasim and MPA Mazhar Ali Qasim had visited the area several times and promised all help to them but to no avail.
The quake victims immediately need relief goods and other support to brave cold. They said the real problem they were faced with was construction and repair of their houses. They need cement, iron bars and other construction material, besides money for this purpose.
Some said there was no scarcity of timber in the area, but most of the victims were very poor belonging to the tenant class. They demanded that the poor tenants should be provided permits for timber from the government reserved forests to construct their houses.
