UN’s plea for quake relief falls well short of target

THE United Nations said yesterday it has received only $85 million of the $550m it has requested for the survivors of Pakistan’s devastating earthquake.

With about $49m more pledged, an additional $42.6m is needed to get through November, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. A month after last year’s tsunami, aid groups were hailing history’s most successful fund-raising drive and starting to rebuild. A month after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was nearly pumped dry and the mayor spoke optimistically of the future.

But one month after an earthquake killed more than 87,000 people in the Himalayas, there is barely enough money to keep relief operations going. Staying alive is all that matters for more than three million people left homeless - and with winter bearing down, survival is not assured.

“What is particularly difficult in Kashmir is that people (will) freeze to death if they don’t get assistance in weeks,” UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said in New York. “It’s even more urgent than it was in these other hurricanes or tsunamis.” Pakistan’s government says about 334,000 tents have been delivered to survivors of the October 8 quake, just over half of the 600,000 that UN officials say are needed.

The UN is appealing for cooking stoves to help people stay warm. Of particular concern are some 200,000 villagers living above the snow line, where forecasters expect temperatures to dip to minus 13 degrees and 17 feet of snow to fall during the winter.

The danger does not go away for those who reach relief camps. The British charity Oxfam warned this week of a looming health crisis in tent camps that have popped up throughout Pakistan’s quake zone, most still lacking adequate clean water and sanitation.

Acute diarrhoea, tetanus and measles have killed dozens since the quake, and an unknown number have died from a lack of medical care. The winter could bring hypothermia, pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses.

The World Food Programme’s emergency relief coordinator, Michael Jones, said that the UN agency has seen early signs of malnutrition among some survivors, though he pledged the international aid effort would not let people starve.

UN officials also have warned they might have to ground some of the 19 UN helicopters flying relief missions because of the lack of money.

A month after the Indian Ocean tsunami - which killed hundreds of Western tourists along with tens of thousands of residents on December 26 - the United Nations and aid agencies had taken in $4 billion in pledges.