One year on, quake survivors homeless in Kashmir

By Imdad Saqi and Siddhartha Kumar Oct 8, 2006, 13:48 GMT

Srinagar - Tormented by cruel memories of the earthquake that ravaged parts of Indian Kashmir a year ago, scores of survivors are bracing to face another freezing winter in their temporary shelters.

Many of them have been unable to rebuild their houses and still live in temporary make-shift structures as government compensation funds have been inadequate and slow in coming.

Families live in tin sheds and drink water unfit for consumption.

'We will have to survive in these cold tin structures as we don't have our own homes to keep us warm. It's a tough winter ahead for us,' laments Haji Ali Mohammed Joo, whose two-storey house was razed to the ground by the quake.

According to official estimates, nearly 43,000 families were rendered homeless by the deadly earthquake that struck the northern Kupwara, Baramulla and adjoining districts on October 8, 2005.

The 7.6-magnitude quake claimed more than 1,300 lives and left 6,600 people injured.

In Madian village near Uri town in Baramulla, one of the areas worst-hit by the quake, only 15 of the 400 damaged houses have been rebuilt.

Families in Kupwara and Baramulla said the government compensation totaling 135,000 rupees (2,970 US dollars) was insufficient to build homes given rising costs of construction material and labour.

Moreover, disbursement of the funds was tardy. Some affected families have not yet received full payments.

'How can we construct our houses when it costs nearly 100,000 rupees just to clear the rubble for construction? No one here has the money to build a house,' said Gulzar Ahmed from Kupwara's Tithwal village.

'We are poor and have to rely on the government. But we are in a predicament, at this rate it will take years to build our houses,' he added.

Kafeel ur-Rehman, a legislator from adjoining Tangdhar village said people could not afford the cost of sand, bricks and cement which had nearly doubled because the villages were at a remote location.

Workers, carpenters and masons were also charging three times higher for their services.

Shafat Hussain, who heads a local NGO, cited recent surveys that said that nearly 35,000 people are still living in tin-sheds and make-shift structures.

'There is a clear danger that the affected families will have to live in miserable conditions through the winter unless the government speeds up the payments and importantly, provides the affected families some additional funds,' Hussain said.

But rebuilding of houses is not the only problem. A food-grain shortage is looming in Tangdhar as many of the state-run consumer stores are still under heaps of rubble.

'There would be a dearth of food grains as new stores have not been built to keep fresh stocks,' a local official Abdul Majid Khanday said.

Further, none of the 73 schools in the area have rebuilt forcing teachers to take classes out in the open. 'We have to close down the school when it snows or rains,' Nisar Husain, principal of a girls' school said.

However, State Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who has directed officials to speed up rehabilitation work, maintained that most of the affected families were safe and well-cared for.

'Relief work and rehabilitation are the priorities of our government. Coordination between various agencies have been streamlined and measures are in place,' he said.

'A final payment has to be made to the affected families, otherwise 90 per cent of construction of the houses has been completed,' said Azad.

He is confident that the housing projects would be completed by November before the winter peaks.

But for the survivors the lack of the comfort of their own homes only sharpens the pain of the tragedy. Nearly half the affected villagers have reported sleep disturbances and other psychological problems.

Mohammed Ramzan is haunted by images of his 8-year-old daughter buried in the rubble.

In Kamalkote village in Uri, a retired teacher, Mohammad Hussain sat by the graves of his three family members who were buried in the debris of what was once his home.

'It will take a long time for the pain to go away. Every backyard here is a graveyard,' he said.