Govt attaches highest priority to rural housing reconstruction program: WB
By Asad Cheema

ISLAMABAD—Pakistan government has accorded highest priority to the rural housing reconstruction program and livelihood support cash grant program in the earthquake affected areas.
The Rural Housing Reconstruction Program (RHRP) has been unique in many ways from the close strategic partnership between ERRA and the donor community that has helped to successfully steer the program through the many challenges of implementation, to the achievements and milestones thai have been attained in less than two years.
Country Director World Bank Yusupha Crookes stated this while speaking at seminar organized here on Thursday by ERRA. Mentioning the achievements in rural housing and livelihood support programs to mitigate the sufferings of the people, he said, by global standards, progress to date has been outstanding, with a rate of start-up higher by multiple factors than seen in other areas hit by disasters of this magnitude.
Even more remarkably, he added, this has been achieved against a background of homeowners themselves being firmly in charge of the rebuilding of their own homes.
He said the program is already transforming construction skills and practices and setting the foundation for broad-based adoption of seismic-resistant building construction in highly vulnerable areas.
One other measure of this program’s overwhelming success and the credibility it has earned, WB Country Director said, is the long list of international financial institutions, UN agencies, and NGOs/INGOs that have subsequently joined the program as financing and facilitating partners, with the result that over US$ 1.2 billion has now been mobilized and over $900 million disbursed for rural housing reconstruction from donors, freeing national resources lot other pressing needs.
On this august occasion I would like to reaffirm our continued solidarity with the many citizens that two years ago lost loved ones or were injured and incapacitated and the many thousands whose lives and livelihoods were shattered suddenly and devastatingly, he added.
We have learnt a lot in the last two years as we have worked under the umbrella of the Government of Pakistan’s “wide partnership agenda” to help restore lives, assets and livelihoods.
This partnership, embracing government, communities, civil society organizations and Pakistan’s development partners has made remarkable progress in getting results on the ground over this short period of time, he added. He said Pakistan in susceptible to a range of natural disasters, both of the recurring type, and those like the 2005 earthquake, which while they happen rarely, can exact a huge human and financial toll, and severely strain and push back developmental spending, if and when they occur.