Earthquake affectees: Two years and Govt’s lip service
By Bushra makhdoom

ISLAMABAD—The 3.5 million people of Azad Jammu Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province will today (Monday) observe the second anniversary of October 8, 2005 earthquake, with the hope that the government will use the “bag of tricks” in forthcoming year, rather than “giving statements”.
The day will dawn with special prayers and shading tears in memory of those 73,000 people killed in the devastating earthquake two years ago.
Sirens will be sounded across the country at 8:49am and people will keep a one-minute silence at 8:50am.
The devastated 7.9 magnitude of earthquake claimed more than 73,000 lives and left 130,000 injured, some 600,000 houses, 6,298 schools and 796 health facilities were destructed, about 6,440 km of roads damaged and 50-70 per cent of water supply, sanitation, telecom and power infrastructure made non-operational.
Two years of devastated earthquake has been passed out, but people are still waiting for the implementation of ideas and promised taken by the government in start, amid and in the end of these years.
The citizens of destroyed areas are also kept oblivious about the master plan of cities which is yet not formally announced by the government.
The delay in master plan withheld masses to construct new houses as they are not sure where their plot stands in forthcoming plan.
The authorities, on the other hand, claims that 90 percent of construction work has been completed and people are now standing on their “own feet”.
In a report published by Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) it is mentioned that 4, 88,277 houses have been built in AJK and NWFP, 49955 houses are under construction and 1, 11,723 are yet to be constructed. But a survey of destructive areas shows a completely different scene.
Hundred and thousand of populates are still living in their temporary houses, because of not being properly guided by the authorities.
Though Deputy Chairman ERRA, Lt. General Nadeem Ahmed, in a current statement said “We will accommodate the people living in temporary places to their permanent locations” but the question stands that where this permanent location is, and when the people will be accommodated to these places? No one knows.
The people of affected areas either told that work has done but only in papers “The government and authorities have done a lot of things for us but only in papers or in front of media, in reality they did nothing” uttered by professor Hadiya Butt, living in Bagh, Azad Kashmir.
Hadiya continue saying that except the construction of some government offices and few schools no major work has been made in these two years “government had funds, they had manpower and they had the support of NGO then why can’t they build even a one city properly?” a question which she asked from the authorities.
Another resident Yasir Khwaja, living in Muzaffarabad, capital of Azad Kashmir, expressed his anger by saying that our government is not sincere with us “the whole world was sincere with us and provided a good amount of funds, by utilizing those funds a whole new AJK could have been built but Alas! Our own government is not sincere with us”.
He said that two out of three installments has been disbursed but the third one is still in queue “it is a biggest lie of government that they have built 90 percent of houses in these two years, our government can’t even disbursed three complete installments then how could they claim that 90 percent of construction work is completed” Khawaja added.