Pakistan: 5 years after the Earthquake
On October 8, 2005 history of Pakistan turned a new page when northern part of the country was hit by massive earthquake. Parts of Azad Kashmir, Khyber PakhtunKhwa (NWFP) and Punjab were severely affected by the tremors and aftershocks that continued for months.
After 5 years, earthquake affected population of Pakistan is still waiting for rehabilitation. The government, as usual, stopped short of its commitments, leaving its people without homes and basic necessities of life.
Apparently there were no lessons learnt from the earthquake and devastation it caused. There were talks of initiating and implementing earthquake-proof building code, but its nowhere to be seen. Also, at that time we lacked specialized machinery to remove the debris as well as trained personnel to manage rescue and relief work. So far, we did nothing to improve on that.
Another critical area that we have ignored so far, both in case of 2005 earthquake and the recent floods, is the coordination and collaboration of civil-government bodies for relief and rescue work. We have the Armed Forces, Government Departments, NGOs, Civil Society and Individuals all working perpendicular to each other, bisecting each other and hence duplicating the effort but not joining forces in a coordinated manner, under a single chain of command, to provide effective and efficient results.
Let us hope that we should still learn something from these disasters and use our knowledge and efforts for the betterment of Pakistan.
Image: Jishnu Das
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it was tremendous natural disaster which cause major damages in North kashmir,so many peoples lost their lives.they were lives begin to slums and indian Govt have taken low concentration towards the people of kashmir.