PAKISTAN GETS
AID PLEDGES OF $350 MILLION
Relief teams raced food and supplies into
earthquake hit areas of Northern Pakistan on Wednesday as desperate survivors readied for a fifth straight night of cold and hunger.
Amid scenes of men and women punching each other over blankets and clothes, the
government said it had got international aid pledges of $350 million but acknowledged it needed to do more to relieve the suffering .Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said his nation was facing a human catastrophe but praised the international community for offers of aid and assistance that continued to flow in. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Wednesday that Pakistan will
build new cities in place of those flattened by the massive earthquake.
He told a news conference that the government was thinking of the future rehabilitation of the worst-hit areas of Pakistani Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province,
What we are planning to9 do is, perhaps , build new cities where they’ve been damaged rather than just rebuild what we had before , said Aziz. So we are going to build new cities and where people own titles of land we’ll swap them with new land in the same vicinity in an organized way, he said.
He visited a relief centre and latter met US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who broke off from her Central Asian tour to show support for Pakistan, a close ally in the US-led war on terror.
The United States , like many other people in the World , has been through natural disasters, Rice said, Our support is not just for today but tomorrow as well.
Meanwhile ,towns and villages across northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir have turned into makeshift refugee camps, with shocked survivors huddling under whatever they can find as they wait for aid that many say has been too slow coming. The thumping twinrotors of giant US army Chinook helicopters could be heard over Muzaffarabad from shortly after sunrise, bringing vital relief to some of the worst-hit regions.
Pakistan has received aid pledges amounting to $350 million from overseas while the President’s Relief Fund had raised one billion rupees($16.6 million) locally so far, Aziz said, adding that his government was setting up an Earthquake Rehabilitation Authority.
The new authority would ensure that rebuilding takes place in a proper way.
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