During the conference, participants from different countries discussed issues like; housing reconstruction, community sustainability and risk reduction, settlement and protection, gender equality in reconstruction and rehabilitation programs, monitoring and evaluation, safeguarding environment, modernizing financial management system.
The conference was aimed at sharing experiences and lessons for understanding the principles and approaches of post-disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation.
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck Pakistani administrated
In the inaugural session, Altaf Muhammad Saleem, the Chairman ERRA expressed his hope that this confluence of disaster management experts would emerge as a useful knowledge sharing experience.
Thanking the development partners, international donors, non government organizations (NGOs) and INGOs the Chairman revealed that four years after the earthquake, 80 per cent of 13,000 projects of water, housing, education, and health facilities have been completed.
“Thousands of new jobs have been created in the quake-ravished regions and this success can be attributed to the high standards of transparency and accountability,” said Saleem.
Appreciating the central role played by the Government of Pakistan in turning the adversity wrought by the quake into an opportunity the Chairman divulged some of the strategic lessons ERRA has learned in the course of implementing its program.
The audience at the inaugural session was also addressed by the Deputy Chairman ERRA as well as senior officials of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Islamic Development Bank and Department for International Development (DFID) of
“It was a real challenge to carry out reconstruction and rehabilitation activities over a rugged terrain of 30,000 square kilo meters covering nine districts,” said Lieutenant General Sajjad Akram, Deputy Chairman ERRA.
“However, we have been able to complete the construction of, 419,624 houses out of the planned 463,243 under the owner-driven rural housing component,” Akram added.
“Lessons learnt from this conference would help in guiding future planning and revisiting the approaches that have not worked,” said Rune Stroem, ADB Resident Mission Director while praising ERRA’s work.
A panel discussion with the topic of “Role of media in post disaster relief, recovery and rehabilitation” was also arranged during the conference.
The participants including senior local and Pakistan-based foreign journalists emphasized that the media should address the problem purely with human angle.
“Media needs to play proactive role drawing attraction of government and non-governmental functionaries towards the sufferings of the victims to help them, while doing the media coverage in the quake-affected regions,” the discussion concluded.
It was told in conference that ERRA has completed the construction of more than 400,000 houses at a progress rate of over 96 per cent in nine affected districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
ERRA will be winding up its operations by the end of 2011 and is currently going through its ‘sunset’ phase.
According to ERRA statistics presented in the conference, 100 per cent of the affected people have returned to their new houses constructed with the help of ERRA.
Education, health, roads and bridges, water and sanitation facilities have been restored to a large extent whereas relief has been provided to over 3.5 million displaced persons.
Out of the total 12,944 reconstruction projects, 5,734 have been completed; 4,690 under construction; and 2,520 are at the tendering stage.
As compared to other hardcore sectors, progress in education sector seems low as out of the total 5,802 projects only 1,207 have been completed so far.
ERRA has also disbursed Rs71.26 billion among earthquake victims.
Applauding the efforts of the ERRA World Bank representative Raja Rehan Arshad observed that the Rural Housing Reconstruction Program was being recognized as a global success both in terms of quality and scale.
In its official note which was read out during the conference, ERRA thanked the development partners for their cooperation and support, which has helped ERRA in achieving its enormous task of reconstruction.
“After passing five year the actual pace of development and reconstruction is very slow contributing to suffering of children, women and men of the affected areas,” said Rana Akmal, a participant in the conference.
“A critical analysis of the situation reflects that issues like urban development, school reconstruction, transparency and accountability of institution and low quality still require concentration from government side,” said Akmal, who has been conducting welfare work in the affected area.
“The conference is good to inform the world what ERAA has done or going to do but a highly important issue of urban development has also been deleted from the agenda of this high level conference,” said Mukhtar Ahmad Ali, an NGO operator.
“As all of the projects are related to people and they have right to information about these projects but it is not being realized by state departments or any authority,” Ali complained. Enditem
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