Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/KABUL: Labourer Rasool Badshah had moved into a new house six months after a deadly earthquake rocked eastern Afghanistan, but without his mother, who was dead by collapsing walls.
According to the Arab news, more than 1,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands were made homeless after the 5.9-magnitude quake, the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly a quarter of the century, struck the impoverished province of Paktika on June 22. When I reached here, my mother, brothers, and everyone was already buried; Badshah said, explaining how he rushed back to his village from Pakistan, where he was working.
Survivors handed over new houses
Hundreds of the earthquake-resilient concrete homes, many built by local labourers with the support of the United Nations refugee agency, have now been handed over to the survivors who were until now living in makeshift tent cities.
Badshah said “We couldn’t have built these houses, not even our children and grandchildren (could have); we could not afford them. We were living in huts.”
The UNHCR said the new houses are equipped with solar panels, independent toilets, and traditional heaters to help residents face the harsh winters. International development funding on which the South Asian country relied dried up after the takeover, and the assets held abroad were frozen. The remote east where the quake struck has been neglected by authorities for years, Said survivor Bara Khan.
Khan said that after the earthquake, people came and saw that residents of the area were in trouble. We don’t even have a school or clinic, he added.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) would start work to build two schools, houses and a clinic in the area, still strewn with rubble, after the winter. Afghanistan is hit frequently by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and the Indian tectonic plates.
