Quake Victims' Reluctant Exodus

BBC News, Muzaffarabad

March 27, 2006

By Mike Donkin

It's almost six months since the earthquake in Kashmir and the authorities say some progress has been made in rebuilding some of the houses that were destroyed.

Now, with winter coming to an end, the government is keen for some of the hundreds of thousands made homeless to return to their villages.

But people in the tent camps near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, are wary about leaving.

Nasima lives with her eight children in one such tented camp on the banks of the Neelum river, which was pretty much the epicentre of the quake.
It's a scruffy, muddy place - families with their washing hanging over their tent ropes and children playing in filthy, rubbish-strewn puddles. "We are living right beside the river here. If it floods, what can we do?" Nasima asks.

"These tents are no shelter for us. My children are small and this is no life for them. It's not healthy and we don't feel safe at night."

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4848480.stm