2,000 Muzaffarabad buildings to be razed

The Muzaffarabad Municipal Corporation has initiated a project to demolish around 2,000 precarious private buildings in the quake-hit city.

“From today, we have kick-started the project, which, in fact lays, the basis of reconstruction in this town,” said the corporation’s Administrator Arshad Mahmood Abbasi at a news conference here on Saturday.

The project has two components: demolition of dangerous buildings and removal of their debris at a cost of Rs 210 million and augmentation of the civic body’s capacity through purchase of equipment and recruitment of around 35 staff.

Quake-hit people desperate for shelters, medicines

Survivors of the Oct 2005 earthquake in Balakot are facing extreme hardships due to the freezing temperature in the area. They are living through the hardest days and looking for a miracle to end their miseries, said journalist Shahjehan Khan, who still lives in a damaged tent in the town.

The number of patients has increased due to the inclement weather conditions.

There is one hospital in the town constructed by the Paktel company, but the patients remain unattended due to the absence of doctors and paramedical staff.

Special packages for doctors in quake areas

The NWFP government has made a plan to rehabilitate health infrastructure in the quake-hit districts and to offer special salary packages to health professionals posted there.

Speaking at a workshop on ‘District health planning and advocacy,’ at the Khyber Medical College (KMC) on Wednesday, Health Secretary Abdul Samad Khan said that the provincial government had decided to offer a monthly salary of Rs 80,000 to the doctors serving in the affected areas.

He said the government had initially sanctioned a Rs 90 million grant to purchase medicines.

Belgium considering swap of 60m euro debt with quake aid

Belgium is considering allowing Pakistan to swap its 60 million euro debt to the European country with aid for reconstruction work in the earthquake-affected areas, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht told reporters on Wednesday.

“My country will consider seriously to write off the loan of 60 million euros,” Mr De Gucht said after talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri.

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker visits earthquake affected areas

Britain’s Prince Charles and his wife Camilla met survivors of last year’s devastating earthquake during a visit to the mountains of Azad Kashmir on Wednesday.

The couple, on their first trip to Pakistan amid tight security, toured reconstruction projects in Pattika, a small town in the Neelam Valley near the epicentre of the October 2005 quake that killed some 74,000 people.

“Our sympathies are with you,” reporters overheard Charles telling one of the residents they met on their three-hour trip. Most of the projects in the town are UK-funded.

U.S. to train 30,000 teachers in Pakistani quake areas

The United States will train 30,000 teachers and build 50 schools in quake affected areas of Pakistan, the U.S ambassador said on Sunday, the first anniversary of an earthquake that killed 73,000 people.

Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker made the announcement during the inauguration by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of the first school built by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Dadar village in North West Frontier Province.

“The school buildings are the hardware and they have to have the software to go with it and that means the teachers,” Crocker said while announcing plans to build 50 schools and train 30,000 teachers in Frontier province and Pakistani Kashmir.

Quake survivors stage anti-graft protest

Hundreds of survivors of last year’s earthquake in Pakistan staged an anti-graft protest in the capital on Saturday, accusing reconstruction officials of corruption.

Waving placards reading “Stop taking bribes”, “Spend the winter with us” and “Build our homes before snowfall”, the demonstrators marched from parliament to the office of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (Erra).

The protest came a day before the first anniversary of the earthquake. “For the past four and a half months, I have received not a single penny,” said Gohar Rehman, a father of five who had come from Muzaffarabad.

UN seeking $45m for winter operations

The United Nations is seeking $45 million for winter operations, including helicopters to help out the affected of the last year’s earthquake in Pakistan.

So far, about two-thirds of that sum has been made available, said a UN press release issued on Saturday, a day ahead of the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook the northern parts of the country in 2005.