Actionaid's work and strategy

Actionaid Pakistan has been adjudged as the most organized relief aid distributing agency in most parts of the areas where our teams are working. After initial few days in emergency supply, Actioaid has devised a coordinated starategy that made organization visible and credible in the respected areas. Due to our sustainable approach and correct assessment report, the Army has offered time and again support to Actionaid teams. Our team from Bagh, Rawlakot and Batagram say, the Army in general is supporting Actionaid as they have escorted some of our volunteers and staff and even provided them shelter and hot food.

Actionaid team in all the three areas is not distributing food and non food supplies, tents and blankets randomly. Rather under a well thought out plan, they go on assessment for the most needy people. After identifying the needy, they give them a token inscribed with name and national identity card number of head of household, be they men or women, their address and signatures or thumb impression. Then on next day, they are delivered tents, blanket and what they need in emergency. Women turned widows, disabled household heads, destitute and labourers are given preference in relief supply as per our strategy.

Actionaid is not distributing single items randomly rather families boxes are delivered that contain household and food and non food items for the whole family. Our Batagaram (Mansehra) team has started supplying tents after their need assessment to 200 households in Shamalai, 100 households in Batmai and 250 households in Bazargai villages. A team of 17 volunteers are doing assessment after a need assessment briefing by the team leader. Now they have started survey in Utthal in Thahkot area, Faqira in Allai area and Phallai.

A part of Actionaids Bagh team returned Tuesday while other part is stationed there to continue with the relief work. So far, Actionaid provided relief supplies and medical care to certain villages including Dhirkot, Hass Chowky, Rangla, Sudhan Gali and Sarbala (a place where Actionaid is the only relief agency reached so far). The returning team members reported that there is a lot of stuff dumped in Bagh area and now they hardly need such supplies any more. However, in remote areas people do need relief goods. They say army has been helping out NGOs and individual volunteers. However, there are reports of some individual army personnel sporadically disrupting relief work for which they have their own reasons.

Actionaid team in Rawlakot is busy distributing tents, blanket, food and non food items in Daraigh, Dhok Hussain Kot, Bin Josa, Tarar and Mori Farman Shah. The team reported that life in Rawlakot returning to somewhat normal with opening of markets and traffic on the roads. They say this area is also flooded by relief goods and the people there need shelter and sophisticated medical treatment for their fractured or broken bones so that they could be saved from gangrenes and amputation of limbs. Our teams used small vans and cars to reach villages. They also use to travel on foot to reach to the people.

Situation

The earthquake hit areas and some parts of the country still continue receiving after shocks almost every day. Landslide reportedly claimed 20 lives. Rain, thunderstorms in most of the earthquake affected areas hampered rescue and relief efforts during last few days.
 Rescue work seems to be closing or slowing down with little hopes of survivors in the rubble after ten days despite sporadic incidents of rescue of children. A team of Pakistan army rescued on Tuesday (18.10.05) a five year-old girl child Tajun Nisa alive from Balakot's Hisa area. However, relief efforts are continuing particularly supply of food and non food items, medicine and utensils.

Reports say world stock of warm tents cannot cater to the needs of the earthquake hit people in millions across Kashmir and North Western Frontier Province spread over 15,000 villages. Another wave of death is brewing as thousands of wounded are lying in the open as hard winter approaches. Due to unhygienic conditions their wounds are getting worst. Though lot of tent hospitals are working, seriously injured people are in pain and agony. Already more than 41000 people are announced dead while many more thousands are feared dead.

A British doctor Sean Keogh and a Pakistani colleague after returning from Neelum valley north of Muzaffarabad told media that 1000-2000 people in the Valley are significantly wounded that need surgical treatment. "Nobody knows how many are up on the slopes," Keogh said of just one area at the top of the valley, Panjkot. He said he had seen numerous people with compound fractures, all getting infected.Some signs of life were returning to Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Rawlakot in Kashmir where dozens more shops reopened. Kashmir government is launching a house-to-house survey in Azad Kashmir this week to try to determine the scale of the disaster.

Relief Commission launches appeal

Pakistan's Federal Relief Commissioner Gen Farooq Ahmad launched a fresh appeal for more tents and blankets while seeking fully equipped medical trauma teams to treat over 65,000 badly injured people still arriving from the earthquake-affected areas. He said around 33,000 tents and 133,000 blankets had been distributed, while 40,000 were in the pipeline. He said water supply in Muzaffarabad was also partially restored and three water purification systems from Austria were installed. For maintaining the flow of traffic and maintaining law and order, Maj-Gen Khan said 100 personnel from Islamabad police and 700 from the Punjab had been deployed in AJK.

Reconstruction plan

Announcing a reconstruction plan at a special session of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said recovery and rehabilitation could take five to ten years and would require $5 billion as over 3 million people have lost their homes and most of them their livelihood as well. He said first we must move survivors from rubbles to tents and decent transitional shelters as quickly as possible, ultimately moving towards construction of model cities for permanent settlement of homeless people. We need to fill gaps and do coordinated efforts for distribution of relief goods. We need to gear up medical and trauma treatment for the injured.

The plan chalks out a detailed programme for permanent settlement of orphan boys and girls including their ed</st1:PersonName>ucation and calls for arranging transitional schools, hospitals, other public offices to restore the government structure. Plan speaks of restoring the livelihood of survivors; to finance new economic activities to raise family incomes above their pre-earthquake levels; and to increase the capacity of local governments, nongovernmental organizations and businesses to undertake reconstruction effort. It calls for jobs for local people in the reconstruction by imparting them large vocational training programmes.

Environmental hazards of deforestation

Environmentalists in Pakistan and across the world are worried about the mountain eco-system which would have aftershock of the earthquake in terms of unsustainable logging of trees and forests depletion. They are critical of the plan of the AJK Prime Minister Sikandar Hyat in which he has said that his government would develop new Muzaffarabad city in the nearby forest area after clearing the trees there. More over if the affected people are not taken care of properly, they will use forests for their livelihood and living both. The forests of Azad Kashmir have already been reduced to the minimum by the private and state-owned timber mafias. They have suggested developing new cities on the already-denuded areas instead of cutting the few forests left there. This new cutting of trees around the Jhelum river, the catchments of Mangla Lake, would sabotage the Rs 67 billion Mangla dam raising project, they warned.

They say global warming and earthquakes are linked to excessive logging of trees and deforested mountains are the first to be hit and ruined by earthquakes. They say when "human" cut trees on the mountains, rain and melting of snow wash mud and rocks, which were previously used to tight by a network of trees roots, down into the plains. This process, after many years of destruction, creates an imbalance on earths plates by making huge heaps of sand in one area and "lighting" the mountains on the other side and result into earthquake. They called for immediate attention towards saving forests to save mountain ecosystem and livelihoods of the mountain communities.

Displacement, Livelihoods and dependence on relief aid

The mountain communities largely hit by the earthquake in Kashmir and Hazara Division in the North Western Frontier Province have been depending on their forest resources and subsistence farming. There are reports that most of their houses, schools and work places are destroyed in the earthquake while their crops, poultry and animal are reported to have survived in large number. The livelihood of a substantial majority of the people of Muzafarabad, Bagh and Rawlakot has been dependent on remittances from abroad, mostly from UK, US and Europe. While the affected people of most of the earthquake hit areas in NWFP largely depend on their local resources and some remittances from other parts of the country and from abroad. But more or less the mountain communities in Pakistan which have largely been affected by the earthquake have subsistence economies.

The subsistence economy and their livelihoods are feared to be affected if mass evacuation and displacement of people took place in name of taking them away from their lands and belongings to the so-called tent villages in Punjab and Islamabad areas.

The relief aid being supplied to them by various groups is in abundance now. Most of them who prior to earthquake depend on subsistence farming for their living and livelihood are now getting this aid. It is feared that this long time dependence would impact their traditional livelihood options and subsistence farming, again a loss to ecosystem. Though many who have relatives and properties in other parts of the country are migrating while majority of the people do not want to shift from their traditional place fearing they would be losing their land and belongings once assessment and survey for reclamation takes place soon.