By Syed Mohammad Ali
06/06/2006

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Below is an excerpt of an article from the Pakistan Daily Times:

Instead of sidestepping local institutions, the UN must start helping build the capacity of local governments to deal with natural disasters. For its part, the government must address the need for urban reconstruction in an expedient but participatory manner

Besides causing more than 80,000 deaths, the earthquake that struck the northern areas of our country on October 8, 2005 affected the lives and livelihoods of an estimated 3.2 million people. Immediately after the hectic efforts to provide emergency relief to the victims of this natural calamity, Pakistan faced the grim prospect of one million people confronting the winter without adequate shelter.

The government and international humanitarian organisations undertook a massive effort to provide temporary shelter to earthquake survivors to meet the fast approaching winter months. At lower elevations, the shelter, food, sanitation, and health care requirements of over 300,000 individuals and families were met by establishing hundreds of camps.

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Survivors still without a permanent shelter might not be so lucky during the coming winter. Yet the reconstruction of earthquake affected areas poses a major challenge. An initial joint assessment by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in November had found 400,000 homes damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. Later estimates have suggested that as many as 500,000 homes were hit.

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The government’s Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA) has yet to devise a comprehensive planning process to address the challenges. There is growing criticism in the country, seconded by international organisations, like Refugees International, which are providing assistance in affected areas, that progress on urban reconstruction programmes is lagging far behind rural reconstruction efforts. Also, the reconstruction efforts in urban areas seem far less participatory for residents and local officials.

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While the government has engaged donor countries interested in urban reconstruction there is concern that local residents are not being included in the discussions. Besides the problem of relocating the city of Balakot and 35 percent of the residents of Muzaffarabad, there is a growing problem of gathering and disposing the massive amounts of rubble lying around in the destroyed cities in an environmentally safe manner.

Concentrating on the less challenging rural reconstruction does allow ERRA to show immediate results, as opposed to committing resources to lengthy planning processes which will take much longer to make a visible difference in urban areas. But ultimately, the need for urban reconstruction cannot be ignored. ERRA would do well to heed calls to form a separate reconstruction group of experts to assist with the housing, economic development, public works, and environmental issues specific to urban settings.

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But organisations like ActionAid have pointed out the failure to effectively coordinate the work of various organisations and to involve them or local governments in relief efforts. Given that the UN-arranged relief coordination meetings did not provide Urdu translators, it is not surprising that local views largely went unnoticed. Instead of sidestepping local institutions, the UN must start helping build the capacity of local governments to deal with natural disasters. For its part, the government must address the need for urban reconstruction in an expedient but participatory manner.