If we don’t take the quake-affected people seriously, history may never forgive us.

So wrote the Dawn Newspaper exactly one year to the day that 3.5 million lives were turned upside down by Pakistan’s worst natural disaster. See below for a reminder.

The Present: Balakot

Before we plunge in, take a breather and picture Balakot City on the 12th November 2006. A reborn memory. Virtually the whole bazaar has been rebuilt from the ashes of decay and destruction. Everything made of thin metal sheeting and wooden frames, moulded together into a living replica of its former glory.

Your feet carry you out of the bazaar and out into the hills above Balakot. It’s a damp, drizzerly day. Signs of the earthquake are still around; a cracked wall, a half buried building, a pile of rubble hidden by cloth fencing and next to nearly every wreck of a building sits a tent or metal shelter.

As I picked my way across the freezing cold water of the river that morning, Mohammad Siddique was waiting on his bike to carry me to lunch with his family. He was living in a half-domed structure of tarpaulin stretched over a bamboo frame. Since the earthquake, he??? survived a cold, wet, yet mild winter with his family in the construction after receiving a Government subsidy of 25,000 Rupees last November. He was now waiting for another subsidy to build something better.

His is the case of many of the survivors of last year’s earthquake that killed 73,388 dead and injured 69,412 more. Balakot alone suffered 14,000 fatalities…

The Past: A quick look back…

Looking back at the calamity of October 05^th, the world could only expect things to get worse. Millions of deaths were predicted. I myself saw only a bleak future for the masses living in tents across the country. Yet, the winter was a mild one. Roads remained open for longer so that aid was easily delivered and despite rocky periods, the relief process was seen as a success. There were no epidemics, no starvation and no untoward loss of life. Most people received food; clothing and money to build prefabricated metal shelters that have replaced the tents that once dotted the landscape.

Prefabricated schools and hospitals were also established in key locations across the affected area and Non Government Organisations (NGOs) and aid agencies became involved rebuilding people’s lives. Seeds, livestock and drinking water were provided to farmers and incentives such as food-for-cash were begun. In January the infamous Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA) came into operation and in April, plans were announced to distribute a further 150,000 Rupees (approximately $3000 US in total) of subsidies to each earthquake survivor to help construct a new house. Each building had to comply with ERRA’s strict earthquake resistant building standards and money was to be released in stages as the foundation, walls and roof were finally finished. Distribution began in August.

Since the earthquake struck, the Government has offered 100,000 Rupees (1 lakh) for every death in a family and according to Government figures 17% of the 600,000 houses needed have begun construction and 27% should be completed by the end of next year. Full rehabilitation of the areas is expected to take five years.

The Near Future: A Slow Process

But back at the daily level of people’s lives, things are not flying along so smoothly. Although Mohammad Siddique’s ‘house’ has been inspected, he complained to me about the wait he had to endure to find out when the second payment of 75,000Rs would be cleared.

Confusion also reigned over how he was expected to build it, as ERRA has changed the design of Earthquake resistant buildings at NGO and public behest. Providing a one-size-fits-all building design doesn’t suit every situation. For people living high up the mountain side, it’s impossible to transport all the construction material needed without incurring huge costs. A recent wooden standard was since adopted and rumour now has it that ERRA may waive these preconditions in the future.

Both of these hurdles are slowing down the rehabilitation process and many people are in a similar boat. Oxfam estimates that as many as 1.8 million face a second winter in temporary shelters. A winter that is estimated to be much harsher than the last by both Oxfam and the Pakistan Met office.

As the cost of building materials and labour in Balakot and the affected areas has skyrocketed, many people are complaining that they can’t afford to build a new house with the money provided. This was a mistake by the Government from the start as money was described as compensation rather than as the subsidy intended.

As many as 80,000 complaints have also been filed since last November over the mishandling of the first batch of subsidies distributed by ERRA. Money was issued on a per roof basis and discarded the fact that many families live in one house. That may be one house, three bathrooms and several floors. This is something ERRA’s inspection teams should have picked up on from the start.

Reconstruction in urban areas has also yet to begin. In Balakot an entire new city is planned 20kms to the South at a location called Bakriyal. “New Balakot” may house up to 50,000 people from all over the area and opposition is stiff. Yet it is estimated that 80% of people will make the move. As in Bagh, the entire centre of Balakot has declared a red zone?due to an active fault line that was found to run through it. Plans are now afoot to turn the town into a tourist spot, yet the key question that sprang to my mind here was, why are the people here being promised compensation if they are to be relocated to a government built house elsewhere?

Altaf Saleem, the ERRA chief, argues that he will rebuild 80% of the 600,000 houses estimated within the first three years. That means that if a household contains on average 6 people, 720,000 people will still be living in makeshift shelters in three years time. The Asian Development Banks places reconstruction time at eight years and still others place this at 10 to 15. (Dawn, 08 October 2006)

Yet another issue is the 35,000 people still living in relief camps in Pakistan. Many are landless and poor and either lived in rented accommodation or had their homes washed away by landslides in last July’s monsoons.

The Far Future: Seeds of Change

The Coming Winter

The World Food Programme (WFP) say they may need to support up to 350,000 this coming winter across the mountains of Northern Pakistan. Food is now being moved to strategic locations for distribution through aid agencies. The lessons learnt from last winter seem well appreciated.

Education

Tent Relief Camp in the grounds of Muzaffarabad Football Stadium (Oct 2005)

Despite the massive shock of life lost to the earthquake, there maybe a huge blessing in disguise lurking beneath. As fresh schools are built across the damaged area, a new initiative formed between UNICEF and the Government aims to get more children enrolled than ever before, especially girls.

Not all villages before had a school and many students had to walk long distances to reach the nearest one (e.g. 36 schools catering to 110 villages in Shegarh council, NWFP). Today there is a tent school in every village, and “attention is now being given to make schools disabled friendly” (Dawn, 08 October 2006).

Recruiting teachers for far flung areas is also never easy. Presently lack of teaching staff is one of the biggest problems and around 1000 to 1500 schools are run by a single teacher. Many teachers resent the poor infrastructure and weather of the mountains yet slowly this is changing. (Dawn, 08 October 2006).

Huge emphasis is being placed on teacher training. USAID has recently agreed to train 30,000 teachers in the Pak Quake area as well building 50 schools and teacher training centres are planned.

In areas where people believe djinns (spirits) live in trees and scarecrows stand in graveyards, education will take time to settle in but the opportunity is there and Pakistan looks unlikely to miss it.

Conclusion

Dissemination of information is crucial to the rehabilitation process and improving just this one key area will clear away the cobwebs of distrust that have seeded so many hearts until this point. At the moment people are running pillar to post through one bureaucratic problem after another, trying to find out the next step they should take in order to rebuild their lives.

People simply don’t know what’s going on. Because inspection schedules were never published this year, many people missed the inspection of their homes and thus missed out on the Governments first subsidy! Because building codes are not published properly, people don’t know how they should build their home or what alternatives are available. That combined with the dilly dallying of bureaucracy, means that many will rebuild their homes in non-accordance with ERRA guidelines.

Fault for this also lies in the way ERRA is setup. It is the nature of Pakistan, for those in power to hold onto it as a life force and the federal government played the same ball when setting up ERRA. Local Councils were completely sidelined in the formation of ERRA and instead a completely separate network of offices was set up near the capital. This gave no local point of contact for the people the Government is trying to help. The UNHCR recently set up a radio service to fill the information gap, but this is hardly their job.

So, as always, people are on their own when it comes to reconstructing their shattered lives. It’s difficult to winterize entire villages and with the slow release of funds many people will surely spend the next few winters outside.

A body was recently formed to deal with national disasters, called the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). What remains to be seen now is if the action can live up to the promise?

Any further needs

Many NGOs are still working hard in the region to re-establish lives and constantly need support. Many are providing much needed medical facilities and medicines to amputees and the long-term ill. Others are providing toys for children and aid to survive a predictably harsher winter. With a hot meal at night and a warm bed to snuggle into we take our lives for granted. As the winter rolls through the Northern Hemisphere just picture yourself sat outside and then contact one of the organizations below to make that small little bit of difference.