Disaster victims threatened to restart poppy cultivation and showed serious concerns about recovery program

Reconstruction is a process and approach based on “build-back-better”  to avoid future flood destruction and ensure resilience building. However, Pakistan in general and Chitral in particular this approach is “build-back-weaker”  business as usual.The huge funding provided by provincial and federal governments for early recovery and reconstruction of flood and earthquake destruction,2015 is blessed funds for the incompetent and transitional officials of the line department and local government agencies. Surprisingly the executing agencies are neither aware about the project risk management, nor the technical competencies of reconstruction parameters. They are not ready to respect to the indigenous knowledge of the local wisdom. They are blessed, they are the executors, they not accountable to public or the accountability process. The recent events in Chitral are some of such example of the organizational capacity and governance issues, exposing the people to disasters and destruction.

The residents of Brep  village in Tehsil Mastuj, Chitral district have announced to launch a protest campaign over the government failure to provide compensation to the earthquake and flood affectees of 2015. The residents, including women and children, staged a protest rally and alleged the government on their failure to provide relief to the flood and earthquake affectees, who lost their houses and community structure, including irrigation channels and local roads in the area. The residents asked the government to provide compensation to the affected families and requested the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to direct relevant authorities to release cheques to the affected farmers. They also warned of launching a protest campaign and restarting of cultivating poppy to cope with the disaster losses.

http://dailychitral.com/%D8%A8%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%BE-%D9%85%DB%8C%DA%BA-%D8%B3%DB%8C%D9%86%DA%A9%DA%91%D9%88%DA%BA-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%88-%D8%AE%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AA%DB%8C%D9%86-%D9%86%DB%92-%D8%AD%DA%A9%D9%88%D9%85%D8%AA-%DA%A9/

Residents of Reshun village shown serious concerned about the ongoing poor quality of channelization work in the Reshun gol stream. The stream was clogged with heavy sedimentation carried by the flooding during 2010, 2013 and 2015. To protect the habitats of Reshum village from the flood risk, government provided 400 million funding to remove the boulders and rocks deposited in the stream could not be removed, the reason best known by the contractor and implementing agencies. The flood devastation 2015, including destruction of  4.5 MW electricity power Unit could be  easily be avoided, if the funds were properly used and the channelization work was property undertaken in 2010 and 2013.  The villagers shown their serious concerned with the current channelization work  the Reshun village is highly exposed to future flood destruction.

The villagers and their leaders alleged that Irrigation department in collaboration of contractor minting money out of the recovery funding is blessing for corrupt mafia.

http://chitraltimes.com/udetail16/chitral_news-16-807.htm

We recommend Buffer Zoning – at least 50 feet should be left between streams and all land disturbing activities. These areas act as filter strips to keep sediment out of streams and keep stream banks stable. In addition, these areas provide excellent food, cover and travel ways for wildlife.

We at CDRC raised  our concerned about the use of multi-billion recovery funding at the hand of non technical officials without project risk assessment and appropriate monitoring and evaluation system. We were very much concerned about the transitional engineering work that  doesn’t meet the criteria of risk management and reconstruction parameter to ensure sustainable development.  We agreed with the district administration on assurance that all necessary monitoring and evaluation system have been developed and will be implemented.