AWARAN: “No, I didn’t receive anything. There are no militants here so what is taking them so long to visit Malaar?” said an old woman named Marjan Bibi in Balochi when asked if she had received any help.

Twenty-five kilometres away from Awaran, Malaar looked a tad better than Mashkay in terms of reconstruction four months after the earthquake struck the district. But from receiving rations every other day in the beginning, the help eventually dwindled away with the start of winter, the people in Malaar complained.

Though Marjan’s entire family moved to Vinder after the earthquake, she stayed back. At present, she resides with a family of ten who take care of her despite not having much for themselves. “The land her sons owned is ruined and lies damaged near Malaar. Yet she refuses to go, insisting she’ll take care of it,” said Illahi Buksh, 45, who’s presently looking after the woman.

From afar what seems like an ongoing reconstruction work in Malaar is in fact ruins caused by the earthquake.

In one of the homes in a badly damaged compound, Sumaira Saeedullah, 19, is the only one in her family who speaks fluent Urdu as she has recently completed her FSc (pre-medical) from Karachi. On a month’s visit to her home, the first thing Sumaira said was that no one, apart from the NGOs, visited the area as yet.

“Only our homes collapsed after the earthquake, but other issues that we faced earlier are still the same.

There is one hospital, but it’s far away. And usually there’s no doctor. We can easily travel from Karachi to Awaran. But this one hour drive from Awaran to Malaar takes us four hours because of the badly built roads,” she said.Sitting beside her, Sumaira’s uncle Hameedullah was taking care of the kids as her father had gone to Karachi to take care of another one of her uncles suffering from flu that had gone worse overnight. This, she said, is a common occurrence in the area.

From Sari Malaar (Upper Malaar) where Sumaira’s home is located to Cheeri Malaar (Lower Malaar), people spoke of similar issues. Each compound in Sari and Cheeri Malaar houses sixty families. Other compounds are scarcely populated because of exodus to cities.

Cheeri Malaar was one of the most quickly rebuilt areas as not many people had migrated to the cities and looked after the reconstruction activity on a self-help basis. Those left behind in Sari Malaar are the ones who had nowhere else to go to for help.

What people mainly spoke about on both sides of Malaar was the absence of proper roads and basic health facilities. They said they need government’s help in building their houses, but it still is not as bad as not having a road or a health facility nearby. Others were more open about asking for help and pleaded to be given “thick blankets”.

Standing outside his tent, with his sons making a mixture to reconstruct their homes from the “first-aid material” given by an NGO, Mir Mohammad Lasi, showed the sheet-like blankets they were given two months ago. “I’m still amazed that the Punjab government succeeded in reaching us in time, but our government is still nowhere to be seen. We still thank these people for sending something our way… At least it’s better than not having anything,” he said grimly, while a crowd gathered around him.

Basically landowners, most people in the area are left landless, as without water and clogged tube-wells after the earthquake, some people do not see a point in keeping their land. A revered senior political activist in the area, Mir Peer Jan, said the government made many promises but failed to keep them.

“Twice, we heard that Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch will be visiting our area, but he did not come. There were announcements of helping the poor people with compensation money, but that hasn’t happened either.”

As the sun in Malaar started to go down, so did the temperature. After finishing the hard labour during the day, the men sit together with an emergency torch to look for cars or vans that come towards Malaar, expecting it to be a government vehicle carrying rations. “We sit here for over an hour every day,” says 25-year-old Riasat Taj, previously a medical store owner, “Nobody has shown up as yet, but who knows, they might.”