MANSEHRA, Aug 21: Growing militancy in Shangla and Battagram is affecting the reconstruction process in earthquake-hit areas of the two districts, said participants of a conference.
The Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority will transfer Rs10 billion to the account of the Provincial Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority for reconstruction of the damaged government infrastructure in the five earthquake-affected districts of the NWFP.
Erra organised the three-day progress review conference in the Government Commerce Collage, which was attended among others by provincial Minister Habibiur Rehman Tanoli, District Nazim Sardar Mohammad Yousaf, Erra planning director-general Arshad Mirza, Perra director-general and works and services chief engineer Pervaiz Nasir, programme managers of district reconstruction units (DRUs) and local heads of line department.
The conference reviewed ongoing reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes in Abbottabad, Mansehra, Battagram, Kohistan and Shangla districts.
On the concluding day of the conference on Thursday, some decisions were taken to boost the pace of reconstruction and rehabilitation works in the affected areas.
It was decided that a joint team of representatives of Perra, Erra, DRUs and Nespak and local union nazims would look for land for reconstruction of schools.
The participants also recommended compensating contractors where it was needed as escalation of prices of building materials and procedural delays were identified as the main reasons for the slow process of reconstruction.
Provincial Minister Habibur Rehman Tanoli said that due to price hike in building materials the rates of contracts might be revised. Briefing the participants on the progress, Perra director-general Nasir Azam said bottlenecks in the way of progress would be removed. He said Rs10 billion would be transferred to Perra this year for reconstruction.
However, he said, the law and order situation in the earthquake-affected districts, particularly Shangla and Battagram, was affecting the process of reconstruction.
Pervaiz Nasir said the Maira Rehmat Khan-Kohmang Boi road, Shinkiari-Nawazabad road, Mansehra-Oghi road and the Koza Banda-Chatter Plain road would be built at a cost of Rs2085.611 million.
He said tenders for 16 roads had been awarded and work on six of them had been started. The chief engineer said work on 92 schools in Mansehra, 138 in Abbottabad, 14 in Battagram and 10 in Kohistan was continuing.
Earlier, Erra’s health director Usman Jillani said that of 148 health facilities, 19 hospitals had been completed and work on 33 hospitals was going on.
He said tehsil headquarters hospitals, two rural health centres and four basic health units had been completed in Mansehra, work on the District Headquarters Hospital, six rural health centres and 13 basic health units was in progress in Battagram and six rural health centres, two tehsil headquarters hospitals and six basic health units had been completed in Abbottabad.
Similarly, he said, 620 of 1,852 water supply schemes in the five affected districts had been completed.