Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (Erra) is providing Rs 0.75 million to each village in the earthquake- affected areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), while every union council will be granted Rs 7.5 million, Deputy Chairman of Erra Lieutenant General Sajjad Akram said while talking to media here on Tuesday.
He said that there were 7,000 houses, which had been constructed illegally and that was why the Erra was not ready to pay them the money allocated for the construction of a house that is Rs 175,000. He said that the Erra's role was that of planning and facilitating, while the implementation was the responsibility of the respective governments.
"The owner driven housing sector of Erra has made considerable progress by completing the construction of 330,166 houses, while 101,465 are in various stages of completion and a total amount of Rs 61.51 billion has been disbursed in the rural housing sector", Akram said.
He added: "Apart from these, 101,091 other partially damaged houses have been paid Rs 5.1 billion. In the rural housing, 504,997 persons have been trained in social mobilisation discipline, while 256,519 have been given technical training. "In the Urban Housing Rs 2.92bn have been disbursed and this sector recorded a tremendous progress of 99.90 percent," he said.
Almost 30 percent work on Balakot City Development Project had been completed and only land acquisition from the NWFP and AJK governments needed to be finalised, he said, adding the Erra's interventions in this sector had resulted in a paradigm shift in development, initiating seismically safe construction through increased community participation.
He maintained that in the health sector, a total of 307 health facilities had been undertaken, along-with the provision of 137 project facilities. He said that in governance sector, 702 official buildings were in various stages of completion, which would have a broad impact on the welfare of the people.
In the transport sector, he said a total of 233 projects had been undertaken, including 13 bridges, which would be completed by 2010. He said that in the environment sector, 21 major projects had been completed, including the initiation of Rubble Recycling Plant in Muzaffarabad.