Government to evacuate 30 villages due to landslide risk

Some 11,000 residents of 30 villages around the city of Muzaffarabad, capital of quake-hit Pakistani-administered Kashmir will be evacuated from their houses by the end of this month after their villages were declared unsafe and prone to further landslides, officials said on Friday. “So far some 1,054 families or 6,515 individuals living in 22 villages near Muzaffarabad and more than 700 families [around 4,500 individuals] living in eight villages in Hattian Bala [a district close to Mazaffarabad] will be evacuated before 1 July when the rainy monsoon [season] starts,” Raja Abas, a commissioner from the government’s Camp Management Organization (CMO), said in Muzaffarabad. “The reason for the evacuation is that these villages have been recently declared highly hazardous areas by the Geological Survey of Pakistan (GSP) and prone to further landslides,” Abas explained. “These people are in serious danger, they have to be shifted.” Over 75,000 people were killed and thousands more injured after a powerful quake of 7.6 magnitude ripped through Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir on 8 October last year. Over 3.5 million people were rendered homeless across the region by the disaster. Government authorities maintain the displaced villagers would be relocated to different camps in and around Muzaffarabad, where thousands of quake survivors are still living in tents more than eight months after the disaster struck. According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 19,000 internal displaced people (IDPs) living in 41 camps in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. An information campaign aimed at persuading people to relocate has been launched by the CMO, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Muzaffarabad. “We have distributed leaflets among the villagers and also launched radio programmes to encourage villagers to cooperate in the process of relocation,” Dawlat Khan, a UNHCR field assistant, told IRIN in Muzaffarabad. In the short term, those relocated would be provided with tents, food, schooling and shelters, official say, while in the longer term they would be resettled elsewhere. “The government has already found land for them [those due to be relocated] and the process of its acquisition is under way so they will be settled permanently,” Abas added. But some villagers, only recently returned home after the quake, are sceptical that they will receive proper assistance if they leave their communities again. “The government has not even paid us our quake compensation, so how we could trust that it would provide us with shelter and food?” Mohammad Safeer, 56, a resident of Sama Bandi village outside Muzaffarabad, commented. “First they should give us land, shelter and food and then we would be prepared to leave the village,” Safeer added.