Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) Chairman Altaf Hussain has said the multi-prong strategies were being pursued to bring back normal life activities in the quake hit areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the NWFP.
Speaking in a television programme, he said the first priority was being given to the rehabilitation of housing infrastructure during next summer season. A strategy has been evolved in this connection to facilitate the affected people to repair or reconstruct their house through self-driven mechanism, he said.
He said 200 assessment teams had been constituted at the union council level which would collect ground evidence of partially damaged or completely destroyed housing units in the calamity hit areas.
These are the three members' teams including on member each from the army, civil administration and the civil society, he added. Erra chief further said the assessment work in the remaining 34 union councils had been given to a well-reputed NGO, which had the capacity to do it. According to rough estimate, the total number of damaged houses ranged between 450,000 to 600,000, the Erra Chairman said.
He said a seismic study had been conducted in the affected areas with the help of some foreign countries, particularly, Turkey and China.
The report of the study would be made public within a couple of days, he said adding the fault line areas would be identified on the basis of this report.
He said the quake resistant designs of the houses had already been evolved and were being distributed in the affected areas, adding next month a media campaign would be launched to inform the public in that regard.
The artisans are being trained in various disciplines about the construction of quake resistant houses, he said. The Erra chairman further said the next instalment of Rs 75,000 would soon be released to the affected people with condition that the amount would be spent on the construction of house in line with the approved design.
To a question, he said the 'grievances address committees' including notable locals had also been set up in the affected areas to ensure the transparency of rehabilitation process. He said the work is also going on to set up a website on which all the information regarding rehabilitation funds and their utility would be available to public.
The Erra Chairman said the strategies had also been evolved for the economic empowerment of the quake-affected people and the rehabilitation of educational institution, health centres and other civic facilities.
To another question, he said some donors had offered to sponsor the rehabilitation of an entire village or town but the idea was not workable.
Explaining he said if a sponsor rehabilitated a village it would of course had good standard of the civic facilities, which the adjacent village might not have. In this way a sense of disparity and deprivation would be created among the local population which is not a welcoming phenomena, he added.
He suggested the donors to sponsor the projects of schools, colleges, hospitals etc at the identified locations rather than sponsoring the rehabilitation of entire village or town.