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EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTES
Remarkable efforts were made by national and international organizations to rehabilitate the
earthquake victims. The most severely affected part of the infrastructure was of education sector.
Thousands of schools were collapsed due to substandard construction and in spur-of-the-moment
thousands of teachers and students were died in the schools, colleges and university.
Rationale
The main factor that helps to take the communities out of the traumatized situation is
rehabilitation of Educational Institutions. It helps them to regain the routine life and gives students
and children psychological relief to resume their education. The delay in the reconstruction of
educational institutes not only causes the wastage of precious time of generation but also their
abilities are disintegrated and they remain unable to overcome trauma. For proper education and
related activities a congealing environmental conditions and standard facilities are required
without which the efforts to impart education go in vain. To ensure timely reconstruction of
infrastructure, continuous efforts are required on behalf of key-stakeholders to push the duty
bearers. Four years have been passed to catastrophic earthquake but the statistics shows that the
duty-bearers and line departments remain unable to rehabilitate and reconstruct the most vital part
of social infrastructure i.e. Educational Institutes. Out of estimated 2835 Educational Institutes
only 220 have been completed so for, which is approximately 8% of the total.
Objective
The main objective of these walks was to highlight the issue of delay in the reconstruction of
Educational Institutes and put the attention of concerned authorities towards it and resolve it on
priority basis.
Press For Peace (PFP) utilized its already existing volunteers in all three districts who
voluntarily extended their support to mobilize key-stakeholders including, teachers, and
students of all ages both male and female, community representatives, civil society members,
journalists, community activists, representatives from trade unions and the officials of
different national and international organizations. Requests letters were disseminated to
School Management Committees to ensure their participation in the events. The management
committees were constituted to arrange for the walks in all three districts. Management
committees were asked to build a strong liaison with the media so a comprehensive coverage
of the event would be made possible.
3. District Rawalakot
On October 8, 2009 a walk in the District of Rawalakot was jointly organized by
ActionAid, PFP and Poond Development Forum (PDF) in which more than 250 students
and individuals from different walks of life participated. The walk started from Main Bazar
and ended at District Court Complex. The participants had play-cards and banners in their
hands and at the end speeches were delivered by students and community. The rally was
addressed by Sardar Qadeer, Chairman PDF, Sardar Basheer, Khawaja Khalil,Sardar
Liaqaat and others office bearers of local political parties and NGOs. They urged
government to start the rehabilitation work on City Development Plan and reconstruction
of schools.
Media Gave extraordinary coverage to these walks. F.M Radio Muzaffarabad & Rawalakot
telecasted special reports regarding the event. At the end of walk BBC and all other T.V
channels telecasted detailed news of this walk and gave encouraging coverage to all the
educational institutes and the students of Azad Kashmir who have been facing bundle of
problems due to poor and grieved condition of their institutes since earthquake of 2005.
International news agencies also delivered press release regarding the event reconstruction.
Similar converge was observed in the media of Indian Administrated Kashmir, which have
also suffered the damages of Earthquake. The overall converge of the Walks, apart from
attracting the attention of policy makers and organizations related to rehabilitation, also
created a public debated about the delaying of educational institutes.
( The details of press releases, news clippings and website links highlighting the activity of
walks in three Districts of AJK, are available in another report)
Recommendations
• Continuous and coordinated efforts are required to lay stress on the authorities through
mobilizing general public and other key stakeholders.
• It is seen that mostly the delay is due to the community conflicts on land issues and the
red-tapism of bureaucracy. Therefore there is a need to create a mass awareness amongst
the communities highlighting the importance of Educational Institutes, their rehabilitation
and reconstruction; also there is a need to find out diminutive ways to resolve the issues.
• Community participation must be acquired to influence the duty-bearers and to help in
initiating the reconstruction endeavors.
Lesson Learnt
It is observed that most of the organizations (National & International) are showing least
interest to the said issue. If these are involved proactively to mobilize communities so that a
continuous process is initiated to urge duty-bearers and line departments to resolve the issue
on the priority basis. Although there had been a continuous criticism on Government from
different segment of the society but no practical action was made.