ROPE Continues to Support Pakistan Survivors One Year after Earthquake

Christian charity ROPE is continuing to support survivors one year after a massive earthquake ruptured vast areas of the northern Punjab and parts of Pakistan-held Kashmir in October last year.

|PIC2|It is thought that as many as 86,000 people were killed in last year's earthquake and a further 3.3 million were left homeless after the tragedy, which saw its one year anniversary last Sunday.

In the immediate aftermath, ROPEholders based in Lahore travelled to the affected areas of Abbottabad and Qalanderabad to partner with existing Christian networks. Together they helped those whose homes were either damaged or left completely demolished and who had lost all their worldly possessions.

ROPE estimates that some 350 Christian families in these two areas alone were affected by the earthquake.

The charity provided an initial grant of £2,000 that was enough to provide warm clothes, blankets, socks, shawls, bed sheets, caps, quilts and food items such as drinking water, dry milk, biscuits, pulses, flour bags, cooking oil and some medicines for 31 families.

A generous response to ROPE's appeal enabled the charity to send out a further £6,000 through its local channels which have been used in part to provide metal piping, corrugated metal sheets, insulation and pipe-bending tools, enabling low cost, durable shelters to be erected by volunteers.

|PIC1|ROPE is appealing for more donations to enable it to kit out survivors and families ahead of another harsh winter.

Many families are still without adequate shelter and support, and ongoing efforts to plan for the care of survivors have been hampered by imperfect and often conflicting information about the numbers and location of the most vulnerable. Further complications include the lack of consensus on whether the need for emergency assistance even exists, reports Refugees International (RI).

RI reported that many organisations they had recently visited had professed a focus on the needs of the "most vulnerable" without, however, being able to say precisely how many of those affected by the earthquake fell into that category.

Neither is the Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) able to provide any official count of the "most vulnerable" people.

According to unofficial estimates, the number of survivors who remain in official and makeshift camps is at least 40,000 while an additional 60,000 people may be forced down from the mountains by the winter weather.

The response from Pakistani civil authorities is also patchy, with some taking steps to prepare for the approaching winter, while others refuse to even acknowledge the need for such planning, RI said.

"Throughout its visit in August and early September, Refugees International frequently heard that 'the mountain people are tough' or 'they made it through last winter, they will be fine this winter'," RI said. "ERRA and international agencies have a responsibility to insure that such views, even if true, are not allowed to serve as substitutes for proper emergency planning.

"Dependence on the resilience of the population is not a response strategy," said the charity.