Islamabad 09 Sep 09: A USAID Delegation headed by Country Director USAID Mr. Robert Wilson visited ERRA Headquarters today. Deputy Chairman ERRA Lt. Gen Sajjad Akram and other ERRA and USAID official were also present. Delegation was uprised about challenges posed by devastating earthquake 2005 and ERRA’s reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in earthquake affected areas. The role of ERRA, organizational hierarchy alongwith the stringent monitoring and evaluation system within the organization was explained to the USAID delegation. ERRA at the moment is handling both brick and mortar and social sector projects while incorporating Gender, Disaster Risk Reduction and Environmental safeguards as cross cutting themes.
The delegation was told that from June 2008 to June 2009 ERRA has made substantial progress in all sectors showing one year progress is equivalent to previous three years progress. While Rural Housing remains ERRA’s flagship program, reconstruction of over 600,000 houses was carried out with owner driven inspected approach and ERRA has achieved over 90% success in this program which is an example in post disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation. Now while over 83 billion has been paid for reconstruction of rural houses, the achievement speaks for itself as previously kacha houses are now seismically resistant packa houses spread all over earthquake affected areas.
Urban development has been one of ERRA’s priorities and while rebuilding 3 cities in AJ&K and one in NWFP the program is well on its way, the health sector has also introduced state of art health facilities having kidney dialysis centers, eye hospitals, MRI facilities and medical rehabilitation of disabled persons has changed the concept of health in once remote areas of Pakistan.
The delegation was also apprised of policy decision taken for speedy reconstruction like adopting fast track reconstruction technologies, enhancing capacity of NESPAK and establishment of dedicated engineering wings at PERRA and SERRA level. While taking on the challenge to rebuild a massive area spread over 30, 000 km. ERRA has also introduced innovations like rain water harvesting where efficient method to secure rain water for daily household will take care of provision of water to thousands of households. With roads rebuilt with modern geometry, bridges connecting remote areas and government buildings fully functional, ERRA has also encouraged community based projects, thus introducing ownership for projects.
Appreciating ERRA’s work as phenomenal, Mr. Robert Wilson reiterated USAID’s support for reconstruction and rehabilitation of earthquake affected areas and commitment to support ERRA’s efforts. He said ERRA’s work need to be shared internationally for possible replication of strategies in other areas also. Commending training of human resources, community mobilization and ERRA‘s commitment for sustainability of projects, he said lessons learnt and challenges faced by ERRA should be shared with the world.
ERRA’s plan for an upcoming International Conference focusing on sharing challenges and lessons learnt in Post disaster reconstruction were also shared with the delegation.