0
MUZAFFARABAD, March 14: A two-member foreign team on Wednesday visited a difficult area near here to inspect the sites of some of the schools which Canada pledged to build in the earthquake affected areas of Azad Kashmir through its International Development Agency (CIDA), officials said.
Jim Sutherland, Assistant Director for Central Asia and Pakistan at CIDA headquarters, and David Fournier, First Secretary (Development) at the Canadian High Commission Islamabad, were joined by reconstruction-related officials from Islamabad and Muzaffarabad to Pathiali village in Union Council Hattian Dupatta, located some 45 kilometres southeast of here.The team had to walk through the narrow mountainous tracks for almost one hour to reach an alternate site of a Boys High School Pathiali after an hour-long drive through rough road, as the original site was declared unfit by the concerned experts, for being under an active rockslide triggered by the quake.
The CIDA has pledged to build 36 primary and 5 high schools and a Girls degree college in UC Hattian Dupatta at a cost of 17 million Canadian dollars.
Tariq Mahmood Butt, a senior officer at the state Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (Erra), told Dawn that CIDA divided the entire project in 12 clusters and construction work on 4 schools falling in the first cluster had commenced.
