Dawn.Com
An unchecked reconstruction of houses along river embankments in the flood-prone areas has been reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with no official agency moving to act in the public interest, experts say.
Officials of international relief organisations involved in providing assistance to the provincial government in rehabilitating the flood affected population told Dawn that the problem was common in almost all those areas where a large number of houses and localities along watercourses were destroyed by rising river levels in 2010.
“New houses, in place of those destroyed in the 2010 floods, are being reconstructed in the riverine areas of Charsadda, Nowshera, Swat, and Peshawar with no one taking note of the anomaly,” said the coordinator of a European funded housing project meant for rehabilitating the flood affected communities.
More than 265,000 households in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been found eligible for receiving housing subsidy, being extended under Citizen Disaster Compensation Program (CDCP), after suffering losses to their houses because of the 2010 floods, according to an official source.
The disbursement of CDCP funds has triggered reconstruction activities in many parts of the flood-affected districts in the province with many affected families rehabilitating their old structures in riverine areas, raising concerns among housing experts of non-governmental organisations.
The issue, said a Peshawar-based official of a UN agency, said the issue had been brought to the provincial government’s notice, but no one had acted so far to correct the situation, avoiding catastrophes in future.
A relevant official of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, when approached, said the Authority was not directly involved in the reconstruction drive. The PDMA, he added, was working hard to pay housing subsidy to the affected families.
He, however, said those who had been raising the issue they should pinpoint the areas where this reconstruction in the danger zones was taking place.
“It is a complex issue as building codes are non existent and not many people (among the constructors) are bothering about building seismic resilient structures or attaching importance to laying stronger beams and columns while constructing houses,” said the official.
Some 50,000 houses were destroyed in Charsadda district and as many in Nowshera district in 2010 where a roaring River Kabul and its tributaries wreaked havoc.
“I don’t think that the reconstruction (of houses) at the same old places is going on at a large scale, it might be the case in some places where residential localities close to riverbanks suffered losses,” said the official.
He, however, said several localities that were inundated by floodwaters were in the flood-prone zones being situated close to watercourses but the government didn’t have the resources to shift the entire localities to safer places.
There does not appear to be a quick fix to the problem, according to international non-governmental organisations’ officials.
The European Agency representative said a vast majority of the affected families could not shift to safer places. “They don’t have the financial resources to buy land at places away from the flood-prone areas for building houses,” said the official. He said billions of rupees being spent by local non-governmental organisations on the reconstruction of houses were at risk of getting washed away in an event of future floods.
“UN and other international agencies that have provided money for the reconstruction are looking into it,” said the official.
The PDMA official said the government’s civic bodies had not paid due attention to check the dangerous practice because land occupancy issues were a major obstacle.
Some hold the view that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government could have taken actions as serious as the government of Punjab took to avoid the reconstruction in the flood-prone zones, particularly, along riverbanks or on dry riverbeds.
The government of Punjab, said the UN official, had barred Wapda and other service delivery agencies from extending their facilities at places declared dangerous after the 2010 floods.
Frequently made administrative changes at the district government level have also been cited as reasons behind the lose grip of the civic bodies, failing to check the reconstruction at unsafe places, according to NGO workers.
The district governments’ employees concerned with disaster management, said a local NGO’s representative, lacked the required training leaving them insensitive to issues with potential to pose future hazards.
Not many of the district coordination officers – administrative heads of district governments – were also sensitive enough to pay attention to the problem of reconstruction in the unsafe places as, added the NGO representative, most of them remained busy with day to day administrative affairs, particularly the security situation in their respective districts.
“This leaves the issues like reconstruction of houses in riverine areas on the back burner,” said the NGO official.
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