Sherpao asks UNHCR for tents, purification plants
By Adnan Rafique

ISLAMABAD—Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao on Monday urged UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to arrange winterized tents, water purification plants, blankets and disinfectant spray for the quake-victims as severe winter is around the corner.
A 3-member UNHCR team the UN agency’s Representative Guenet Guebre Christos, Director Operational Support Division Arnauld Akodjenou and Salvatore Lombardo called on the Minister here at his office.
The minister said that the October 8 earthquake had ravaged 21,000 square kilometer area, leaving a trail of death and destruction and making millions homeless.
“we are striving to shelter quake survivors in tent villages,” Sherpao said, adding that provision of tents to quake affected people was underway along with other relief goods.
The government is setting up tent villages for transient settlement of quake survivors at Islamabad, Chakwal and Talagang, Sherpao said.
He said 3000 foreign aid missions had so far reached Pakistan bringing medical and paramedical teams, rescue and relief workers, field hospitals and tents.
Efforts are underway to access the remote hilly areas using all means, the minister said. The UNHCR representative assured Sherpao that more international aid was on the way. Already the UNHCR has brought 15,000 tents, 220,000 blankets, 68,794 plastic sheets, 500 plastic rolls, 31,840 kitchen sets, 2,000 stoves and 5,000 lanterns to help quake victims.
The agency has appealed the international community for additional US $ 22 million to manage temporary camps for people displaced by the earthquake, Christos said.
UNHCR emergency teams including experts in camp planning are working at five key locations at Mansehra, Balakot, Batagram, Bagh and Muzaffarabad to help with aid distribution and the establishment of temporary camps, he said.
Christos said Pakistani companies have traditionally been one of UNHCR’s main suppliers of tents, but local production is now geared exclusively to the needs of the earthquake victims.
The UNHCR representative said it needs to find additional suppliers elsewhere in the world to produce or provide more tents and the agency’s procurement staff are contacting all possible sources.
Tents are a priority item as hundreds of thousands of quake survivors from affected Himalayan towns and villages struggle to find shelter amid a deadly mix of continuing aftershocks, broken supply routes and cold and wet weather which may soon turn to snow, the UNHCR representative said.