The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday signed a $5 million grant agreement with Pakistan for rebuilding livelihood and support poor households headed by women and disabled in areas devastated by the October 8 earthquake.
This would support 8,000 poor vulnerable and targeted households, many of whom live at high altitudes, resume cultivating crops and thus rebuild their livelihood.
This amount would come from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR), financed by the Government of Japan.
The country director at Asian Development Bank Pakistan Resident Mission, Peter Fedon, M. Ismail Qureshi, secretary, Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal), and Khalid Saeed, secretary, Economic Affairs Division, signed the agreement.
The project is designed to deliver urgently needed agricultural and livestock supplies, including farming inputs, goat and poultry units, and animal feed and animal sheds, training in health and sanitation, and rehabilitation of community-based small infrastructure.
It thus aims to instil self-confidence to enable the communities to participate in income-generating activities and eliminate dependence on aid.
Fedon said: "Physical infrastructure identified and prioritised by the communities themselves, including drinking water supplies and sanitation facilities will also be restored."
The revival of subsistence-level crop and livestock husbandry activities will ensure food security, and secure livestock from perishing in the cold without shelter, he added.
Minfal would be the executing agency of the project and the implementation and the management support will be provided by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The FAO will also be responsible for the procurement and delivery of materials and supplies needed to union council headquarters. It will also provide technical backstopping in agriculture and livestock interventions.
The subsidiary implementing agencies at the field level will be the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), and the Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP).
They will be responsible for community mobilisation, participatory identification of community needs, and delivery of materials from the union council headquarters to the beneficiaries.
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