MUZAFFARABAD, 8 October 2007 (IRIN) - "I'm very happy to be back in my home," said Mohammad Saddique, a 54-year-old civil servant, stepping back to survey his newly constructed home in quake-affected Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

In October 2005, his home, like thousands of others in the area, collapsed in Pakistan's worst natural disaster in recent times, forcing him and his family to live in a nearby tent before rebuilding could begin.

But despite the challenges, including rising construction costs, not only did Mohammad rebuild his home, he did so better.

Working closely with engineers trained by the National Society for Earthquake Technology - Nepal, technical experts of the UN Human Settlements Programme (HABITAT), and local masons, Mohammad used quake-resistant material and methods; techniques until recently largely unheard of in this seismically active part of the world.

Two years after the quake, many people across northern Pakistan are still homeless - with most of those in the rebuilding process still at the plinth stage. But stories like Mohammad's give hope that things are moving in the right direction.

"You will hardly see any people living in tents any more," said Lt-Gen Nadeem Ahmed, deputy chairman of the government's Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA), the government agency charged with organising reconstruction efforts, on the eve of the second anniversary of the quake.

The situation on the ground is improving, particularly in rural areas, Ahmed said.

Over 75,000 people were killed and 130,000 injured on 8 October 2005, when a massive 7.6-magnitude quake ripped through Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Within seconds, 600,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, rendering 3.5 million people homeless.

Massive international and government relief efforts soon got under way to assist survivors and assess damage across the 30,000sqkm quake-affected area - roughly the size of Belgium - but shelter soon emerged as the greatest challenge.

In addition to the sheer cost, as well as the dearth of qualified artisans in the area, the task of rebuilding so many homes in remote mountainous terrain was daunting. As winter approached, many roads remained cut off by landslides, while most areas were still without electricity or running water.

In the quake's aftermath, thousands sought shelter at displaced persons camps throughout the region, while others erected makeshift shelters alongside the ruins of their devastated homes to protect what little they had left.

Help for homeowners

The Pakistani government created ERRA and adopted a bold strategy for rural reconstruction, where the vast majority of the affected population lived.

Homeowners were given over US$3,000 in installments to build quake-resistant homes - with routine visits by inspection teams.

In addition to financial assistance, people were provided with technical advice and expertise, while government assessment teams visited over 10,000 villages in the affected area to determine the level of damage incurred by each individual home.

Masons and steel-fixers were given training in quake-resistant construction techniques, such as horizontal concrete bands at sill and lintel levels, placing vertical steel reinforcement at corners and on either side of windows and doors, and proper ratios and curing times for cement.

To date, HABITAT, which has taken a lead role in the training, alongside its implementing partners, has trained over 37,000 engineers and artisans. Close to 360,000 beneficiaries, of whom nearly 74,000 were women, have received technical orientation and planning information.

"Unprecedented" achievement

Two years on, the real success of the strategy lies in the number of people that have been re-housed so far; a growing number by all accounts.

According to the Pakistani government, as of 5 October 200,000 houses had been rebuilt with another 300,000 now under construction. Over $1billion in government reconstruction assistance had already been distributed.

"The achievement for the overall housing reconstruction effort is unprecedented," Jean Christoph Adrian, country representative for HABITAT in Pakistan, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad.

"With a disaster of this magnitude, dealing with the type of mountainous terrain and extreme weather conditions, we feel that much more has been achieved than in any other response to recent natural disasters worldwide," Adrian said.

Citing owner-driven housing reconstruction efforts that were only partially employed in the tsunami-struck areas of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, Adrian noted that the owner or community-driven strategy showed a much higher rate of success in terms of number of houses reconstructed in both countries - testament to why HABITAT has been advocating the approach for so long in post-disaster and post-conflict situations.

"Instead of some organisation rebuilding for them, they [the people] are directly responsible for the completion of their house," Adrian said. "This empowers them, giving them a sense of ownership and pride. It allows them to overcome the trauma of the disaster by focusing their efforts rebuilding their lives."

Training

Meanwhile, Habitat's two main concerns are to continue improving the safety of the houses being rebuilt and to strengthen mechanisms to facilitate the most vulnerable in rebuilding their homes.

While donors are usually more inclined to fund tangible, concrete and visible activities as opposed to construction training and advice, Adrian hopes that mindset will soon change.

"This aspect, which is less visible, is unfortunately ill-funded," he said, noting that donors do not allocate enough funds to technical assistance to maximise the financial assistance provided to the people, with only a few bilateral institutions understanding the need to support such practice.

To date HABITAT has spent $10 million in quake-affected Pakistan supporting people to rebuild; with funds likely to be depleted by June 2008.

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