EU to give extra €80m in Kashmir quake aid

EU: The European Union yesterday announced a further €80 million in Kashmir earthquake aid as relief workers in the region warned…

EU: The European Union yesterday announced a further €80 million in Kashmir earthquake aid as relief workers in the region warned of doubts about Pakistan's ability to distribute emergency supplies.

The EU had already earmarked a separate €13.6 million in emergency humanitarian aid. About €30 million of the new aid will go to immediate relief of earthquake survivors, with the rest intended for long-term rebuilding.

Louis Michel, EU development commissioner, said: "With winter just around the corner, a second humanitarian disaster looms for the four million people without a roof over their heads and the 70,000 injured people needing medical attention."

In Pakistan, western officials said the deaths of local government staff in the earthquake was hampering relief efforts. The warning from western experts comes as Pakistani officials prepare to meet donors in Geneva tomorrow to discuss reconstruction needs, estimated at more than $5 billion (€4.2 billion).

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As a Himalayan winter looms with millions still in need of shelter, the immediate concern is ensuring that emergency supplies can reach those in need.

But relief experts doubt Pakistan's "absorption capacity" for aid - its ability to disburse quickly the food, tents and other supplies arriving from overseas.

The key problem is that the local government in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir lost thousands of civil servants among the 53,000 estimated to have died. The government rushed civil servants into the region to rebuild bureaucratic structures. But western experts said the process had been slow. It has been made worse by casualties among staff of many non-governmental organisations in Kashmir.

In Mansehra, a town close to the earthquake's epicentre, for example, the head of the local health service was among those killed, said Omar Abdi, Unicef's top official in Pakistan. Worse still, many of the civil servants and NGO workers who survived - those key to relief efforts proceeding - are "traumatised because of a family member [ being killed or injured]", he said.

"The weather is against us. Time is the scarcest commodity," said Jan Vandermoortele, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan.