Sitting on a low stool as she shapes the flour dough lying before her into balls that will be flattened to make bread, Maryum Bibi, 15, looks at the prepared dough, then re-kneads it before repeating her task.
“My mother said to keep the ‘rotis’ (round, flattened bread) small, because now we don’t have enough ‘atta’ (wheat flour). But it is quite hard because I am used to making them larger, as I have always, done,” she told IRIN.
Maryum has carried out almost all the domestic chores in her house for over two and a half years now. Before that, she used to go to school. Then the family lived in a tiny village in Mansehra District, north of Abbotabad.
Mansehra was among the areas most severely hit by the October 2005 earthquake, which killed over 73,000 people. It dramatically altered Maryum’s life, as well as that of her three younger siblings and her parents. Maryum’s father, Muhammad Alauddin, a farmer, lost his mother and two sisters in the disaster. He also suffered damage to his land, house and livestock.
Inflation over 20 percent
“It has been hard, but we were managing, one way or the other. My employers helped out by giving clothes for the kids or other items,” said Razia. But the hike in food prices over the past year, with inflation running at over 20 percent, has hit them hard. “Now things are desperate. We still have the same income, but everything is much more expensive. A kilogram of `atta’ that cost Rs 15 a year ago now costs over Rs 20, and sometimes it is difficult to obtain,” said Razia. She can no longer cook vegetables for her family, and they depend largely on ‘roti’ with pickles or lentils to survive.
Pakistan is on a list of 35 countries that the World Bank has warned face a grave food crisis, and the rise in food prices has hit most citizens. But some groups, including quake survivors, are often worst hit. Apart from the dead, the quake caused huge losses of livelihood, destroyed cultivated land and deprived thousands of families of their main earners.
“Many families have still to recover. They need continued help and support,” Imran Khan, provincial coordinator for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in Peshawar, told IRIN.
 Photo: David Swanson/IRIN  |
| Residents at a displaced persons camp in quake-hit Muzaffarabad await a WFP food distribution |
Federal Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, the acting finance minister, has acknowledged that “food is a growing crisis at the present,” while the government has promised measures in the budget to try and tackle rising food prices.
The areas worst affected by the 2005 quake were among the poorest in Pakistan. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 43 percent of people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and 34 percent in the North West Frontier Province lived below the poverty line. The losses inflicted by the natural disaster added immensely to people’s hardship.
“We grew our own maize and vegetables, and had livestock, so we could manage in terms of food. But the earthquake destroyed our land and now I have come to Abbotabad to try and earn a living,” said Farooq Ahmed, from Bagh in Kashmir. Like others, he is finding it hard to manage the food needs of his family of six.
“I do not wish to do so, but I fear I may have to take my eldest son, 14, out of school and find work for him,” said Farooq. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported a 15 percent increase in child labour in the months after the quake.
In April, at a press conference in Islamabad, the regional director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), Anthony Bandury, said: “Rising food prices can pull more people into poverty and deepen food insecurity among already vulnerable groups.”
In Pakistan, the WFP supports around four million food insecure people, including those in the quake zone, but it has warned that spiraling food prices were affecting its performance, and this could mean further suffering for the vulnerable in the country.
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This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
