Bad weather disrupts relief and returns

Heavy rain and landslides are disrupting return and relief operations in earthquake-affected areas of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, officials said on Tuesday. “The bad weather like this - if it rains for two days - means that road slides and landslides will occur. So everybody at this moment is waiting,” Morgan Moris, head of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Muzaffarabad, said. Sporadic showers started late on Monday and have continued across most of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, disrupting relief and return operations, while the Pakistani military has reported some landslides in the area. “The only thing that stops people going back [to their communities] at this point is if the roads are not open. We cannot do anything about that. We are just waiting for the [Pakistani] police or military to come down from Neelum and Jhelum valleys, if those roads are clear then people will be able to continue to go back,” Moris added. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has also suspended its operations in the quake zone. “Our road and helicopter operations have been suspended today because of bad weather,” Aslam Khan, head of WFP’s office in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, said. With low clouds and mist over the mountains in the area, visibility becomes very poor making air operations virtually impossible, UN Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS) specialists explained. “We can fly in the rain. Rain itself is not a problem for us, but provided that visibility is all right, which is not the case now,” they said. However, WFP managed to distribute both by air and road approximately 70 percent of their requirement for the month of March over the past two weeks. “We hope that we will complete our deliveries well in advance, that is, before 31 March,” Khan noted. “The helicopter operation will also scale down in the coming days due to funding problems. So the weather and the helicopter funding reduction are the main concerns,” the WFP official added. With helicopter operations reducing and emergency relief phasing out by the end of March, international organisations and NGOs will use mainly road transportation for their reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes. But landslides affecting roads will remain a concern, relief workers say, especially for the return of those displaced by the October earthquake. “The road slides are going to be like this for the next six months on and off, according to the [Pakistani] army, until a lot of the loose debris is cleared. But this usually happens, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few days. It disrupts but does not stop the return,” Moris of UNHCR said.