Back to most
recent news releases • Browse archive: 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • Email this
story
Serious Challenges Remain as Pakistan Response Enters Eighth Month
The first steps of recovery remain difficult for these uprooted quake survivors and their families: The road to their village remains blocked, so they can't get there yet, and their cattle were lost in the quake.
Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS
|
By Chris Herlinger
Church World Service
ISLAMBAD, Pakistan--Just as the effects of the October 2005 earthquake are still all too apparent throughout northern Pakistan, slow, steady but sure signs of recovery are also visible.
Long lines of patients are common at mobile health clinics, as well as a Basic Health Unit, operated by Church World Service and its partner, the Raiwindi Diocese, Church of Pakistan, at remote locales in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir (Azad Kashmir).
The quake's effects are perhaps most glaring in Balakot City, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. Many of the quake's survivors of the disaster remain in tents, and numerous signs of destruction are still visible--the remains of some buildings still litter the landscape.
Still, the city's market is slowly coming back to life. And a cornerstone of CWS work in the region is bustling: In conjunction with DOSTI, a local partner, CWS is helping train young men in masonry, electricity, welding, plumbing and carpentry. The training is helping the men not only build new homes for their families, but also enabling them to assist reconstruction efforts throughout the region.
At one of the training centers, the Bissian Construction Trade Training Center, just outside of Balakot City, several dozen young men--who once worked as day laborers or agricultural workers--energetically practice their newly acquired skills, whether laying brick, cutting wood, or fixing wiring.
One of the men, Jahangir Mughal, 24, who lived in a village some 30 kilometers outside Balakot City and lost family in the quake, recently displayed his prowess as a carpenter. "I like everything about the training," he said.
But serious challenges remain as the response to the disaster enters its eighth month, and those challenges cannot be minimized.
One challenge is perhaps the most obvious--that posed by the collision of geography and climate. This is steep, high, mountainous country and roads in many areas remain barely passable; from afar, these white scars of mountainsides look settled. But days of driving through this terrain belie that idea--with continuing aftershocks and attendant landslides, the land itself is not calm.
And with Pakistan on the verge of its annual monsoon season, those trekking back to their villages will face difficult challenges.
One group of residents from the village of Naran, 86 kilometers from Balakot City, recently told a visitor why they remain in a camp from the displaced--where they had received rations from Church World Service--but cannot yet return to their village: Roads are still blocked and there is no way they can yet travel there.
Moreover, the question of livelihoods remains paramount in their minds: Their cattle were lost in the quake and with them, a key means of support.
The men--Faglor Ullah, Sultan Nazir Shafiq and Salaman--said the authorities had done a good job of responding to the initial disaster but it remained to be seen how they, the quake survivors, will be able to rebuild their lives now.
That's the operative question throughout the quake-affected areas, said Marvin Parvez, director of Church World Service Pakistan/Afghanistan, as he and others remind the international community that this disaster--its effects, its fallout, its uprooting of hundreds of thousands of lives--is far from over.
"Everyone," he said, "is still in a very difficult situation right now."
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
Back to most
recent news releases • Browse archive: 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • Email this
story