After six years of the 8th October 2005 earth quake, the rehabilitation of mentally and physically disabled persons of Bagh AJK has not become possible instead of the fact 300 million rupees were allocated for the disabled persons; the institution responsible for the rehabilitation of the earthquake affectees EERA has not transferred the said money or made any project for the rehabilitation of disabled persons.
These facts were disclosed in a training workshop titled “Development Communication” organized by the Action Aid and Save the Future on Wednesday at Bagh.
Head of MRDA and MS District Headquarter Hospital, Dr Raja Atiq admitted in his address that the disabled people due to October 2005 earthquake cannot be looked after, although 31 people were unable to walk due to break down of backbone in October 2005 earthquake, adding that neither they were given proper food nor they were given concentration due to the big disaster.
He also agreed with the statement of social activist working for the disables persons Aqeel Haider Banday that more than 150 disabled persons of district Bagh are looking for divine aid because the state institutions did nothing for them.
Dr Atiq also admitted that he did not have any figure of disabled people, adding that the number of severely disabled persons could be over 20.
When he was asked, EERA resaved 7200 million rupees for the rehabilitation of disabled people. 400 million rupees were released to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and they are working for the rehabilitation of disabled people, which project in Bagh and Muzaffarabad was started from the reserved 300 million rupees?
He replied due to bad luck these 300 million rupees are not received by the government of AJK yet, adding that 150 million rupees were reserved for Bagh to construct an RIC of worth 0.9 million for the disabled people, adding that due to non release of funds for Bagh these projects were not started.
He said that release of 150 million from EERA is the responsibility of government, adding that only six employees are available to make the physiotherapy unit function while in Muzaffarabad 21 employees are working in the same unit.
He also disclosed that a number of doctors were hit by depuration and some them also facing deportation nowadays due to October 2005 earthquake.
The District Head of Construction and Rehabilitation process, Raja Irshad, Mehtab Ashraf, Tahir Abbasi, Asif Iqbal, Fouzia Saeed and others also address the closing ceremony.
September 28, 2011