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Committed to Pakistan quake relief, but urgent funds needed, says UNHCR
02 November 2005
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, 02 November (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency today stressed
that it will continue urgent relief efforts in Pakistan’s earthquake affected
areas, where it has already set up 12 camps for people who lost their homes in
the disaster.
“We are here to stay,” said UNHCR Representative in Pakistan, Guenet Guebre
Christos, responding to an erroneous newspaper report that the refugee agency is
considering pulling out of earthquake relief efforts. “UNHCR has worked closely
with the government of Pakistan for 25 years to help Afghan refugees, and we
will certainly continue to support the authorities through these hard times.”
Immediately after the October 8 earthquake, UNHCR released hundreds of tents and
plastic sheets in its warehouses in Quetta and Peshawar. It also mobilized its
stocks of more than 16,000 tents, 230,000 blankets, 83,000 plastic sheets,
32,000 jerry cans and 28,000 kitchen sets from emergency stockpiles in
Afghanistan, Denmark, Dubai, Iran, Jordan and Turkey, enlisting the help of NATO
in some cases to airlift the supplies into Islamabad.
On the ground, these relief items are being distributed fast, and a second round
of supplies is scheduled to be airlifted into Pakistan by NATO starting this
weekend.
While the relief effort is well underway, the challenges are daunting. “An
estimated 3 million people are now homeless, and winter is just 1-2 weeks away,”
said Guebre Christos. “People in the mountain villages will start moving down
for help as the weather gets colder, and we must be ready to receive them.”
So far, UNHCR has helped the Pakistan military and local non-governmental
organizations to set up camps for people displaced by the earthquake in the
Balakot, Batagram and Muzaffarabad areas.
Camps like Bassian, Ghari Habibullah, Hassa, Umeed and Shamlai have received
some 8,000 UNHCR tents and are benefiting from basic services like food, water,
sanitation, health care and education provided by UNHCR partners like UNICEF,
the International Medical Corps, Norwegian Church Aid, the Taraque Foundation
and the Society for Sustainable Development. UNHCR tents and supplies have also
been distributed to camps in Azad Kashmir, like Thori Park, Meeran Tanoliyan and
Sarran.
“New makeshift sites are appearing every day as people get more desperate in the
mountains and valleys,” said Guebre Christos. “To prevent a second wave of
winter-related deaths, we need more relief supplies and technical teams to make
sure that people’s basic needs are met in these camps.”
Under the joint UN response to the earthquake in Pakistan, UNHCR is the lead
agency for camp management. It needs US$30 million to coordinate assistance in
camps for up to six months, but has so far received only $5.7 million. The
agency has already spent more than $5 million of the $7.6 million borrowed from
its operational reserves in order to keep up the pace of relief work, and fears
that it may be forced to scale down its work at this critical time if more funds
do not arrive soon.
Media Contact: Vivian Tan, Mobile: 0300 500 1133
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