Loss of livelihoods in quake zone severe

When the 8 October earthquake rumbled through the tiny hamlet of Dung in the Gojra Union Council, west of the city of Muzaffarabad, the animals fled to the fields where they destroyed all the crops. Most of the villagers had not yet begun harvesting the maize and wheat that would provide food for two months during the bitter winter. Those who had started to harvest their crops were only half way through. The animals that did not flee were crushed to death, depriving villagers of yet another precious source of food and income. To make matters worse, the men of the village, who are forced to migrate to the country’s cities every winter to work as cheap labourers to supplement their paltry food reserves, have not gone. Instead, they are battling for the survival of their families. “We’ve been removing debris and looking after our families, looking for food and tents. We’ve been too busy to go to work,” said a village elder. Agriculture is a way of life for rural families who depend on farming. But the earthquake, that killed at least 86,000 people, has precipitated a catalogue of agricultural and economic destruction leaving millions without livelihoods. Poverty punctuates every part of life here and the villagers live a hand-to-mouth existence, eking out a living as farmers and labourers. In this hilly, mountainous region, flat land is a rare commodity and usually steep steps of small terraces are all that villagers have for farming land. Plots of land are poorly fed by water and too small to yield enough crops to sustain families for more than three months a year. Like most farmers in the region, Mohammad Soleyman’s life has been clouded by debt. He owns a piece of land just 20 metres by 50 metres, which does not yield enough crops to feed his family through the harsh winter months when Dung is cut off by snow. So from March every year, Mohammad travels two days by road to reach the southeast city of Sindh where he earns just over US $3 a day for backbreaking work, lugging water tanks onto donkeys to distribute to homes. It is a long way to travel for work, but in Sindh he earns twice what he would earn if he worked in nearby Muzaffarabad. The money he earns is not enough to buy the remaining food his family must stock for winter, so he buys it on credit from shops in Muzaffaraabd. It then takes him up to six months to clear his debts and the cycle begins again. But the quake has also disrupted this chain. “With so many shopkeepers having also had their shops and stock destroyed they can’t afford to give food on credit. Unless poorer people get relief they really won’t be able to support themselves,” said Michael O’Donnell, a food, security and livelihoods adviser for Save the Children in Muzaffarabad, who have been assessing the impact the quake has had on livelihoods in the Muzaffarabad and Bagh districts. Pride of place in most rural households in northern Pakistan is a buffalo, which can fetch over $800 for the prized Punjabi breed and most families own at least one such beast. The local, cheaper ‘desi’ breed produces about six litres of milk a day. The villagers use half of this for their own consumption and sell the rest for 25 cents a litre. “A single buffalo is a real asset for households to have and one female meets about 15 percent of the household’s food requirements. Those households which have lost a buffalo have lost a significant source of food for the family,” said O’Donnell. The loss of precious livestock has been great. According to a report by the Department of Agriculture in Muzaffarabad and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 50 percent of cattle and 47 percent of buffalo were killed in the district of Bagh and 21 percent of cattle and 29 percent of buffalo were killed in the district of Muzaffarabad. But the report says that those living at higher altitudes have suffered even greater losses as more animals were stored inside buildings that collapsed. Rural communities also keep cattle and on average each household has at least one animal, but over 30 percent of goats and sheep were killed. The earthquake struck at the peak time for cutting local grass for hay and there has been scarce fodder to feed Mohammad’s buffalo, which is now only producing a litre of milk a day. Mohammad lost an ox in the earthquake and now he has no way to plough his land. “I can’t afford a tractor and I can’t plough the land by hand,” Mohammad said. Farming equipment was also destroyed by the earthquake, which also caused substantial destabilisation of the soil. Big cracks slice through farming land and with the onset of rain, when water will seep through the crevices causing further damage, there is a serious risk of landslides. Water supplies have been severely affected. Many natural springs have dried up and water channels used for irrigation have been broken, misaligned, blocked or simply wiped out by quake-related landslides. Mohammad has not yet received the $2,500 compensation that the government has promised each affected household. But even then, it won’t be enough to rebuild his life. “I’ve lost everything. It will take me three and half years’ wages to be able to afford to rebuild my house,” he said. “But what can I do?” he shrugged with a sad smile.