ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation is set to release a report aimed at assessing the impact of the housing subsidy provided by the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (Erra) to the people affected by the October 8, 2005 earthquake.

According to an official press release issued here on Saturday, the organisation stated that real cost of the reconstruction of houses was much higher than the support provided by Erra.

The report to be released in a couple of days questions the policies and implementation mechanisms of Erra that demand cumbersome documentation and paperwork from affected people and put them at the mercy of assessment teams. As a result, the affected people have been chasing housing subsidy for the last three years.

The report says the costs of accessing the subsidy was much higher and also brings to light the loss of income suffered by survivors of the October 2005 earthquake.

The loss of income it takes into account includes only those losses that occurred as a result of people’s inability to get back to work due to their preoccupation with Erra procedures. These amounts, when combined, show that the average cost of accessing subsidy is much higher than what people have received from the government.

The policy adopted by Erra makes housing subsidy subject to compliance with Erra’s construction standards, design and specifications and requires assessment and monitoring at different stages of house construction. As a result of assessment and monitoring requirement of 600,000 houses in difficult mountainous terrain, over a quarter of a million households are still awaiting to access the complete subsidy three years after the earthquake.

The process has involved an absolute minimum of four visits to each and every household scattered across rugged, inaccessible mountainsides.

Multiple changes in the design and specifications issued by Erra, complex retrofitting procedures, misplaced documents and cases have led to claimants incurring huge costs in documentation and travel. Most villagers had to provide transport and meals to the monitoring teams to convince them to visit their houses located in far-flung areas.

These teams have on many occasions allegedly misused the powers to approve or disapprove cases and a lack of accountability or fear of reprisals have led to numerous unreported cases of rent seeking at each stage of release of the subsidy.

According to the foundation, Erra and its sponsors celebrate their success amidst a clutter of data that meant to create an impression of success of their owner driven housing initiative. These policy makers seem oblivious of the reality of a people burdened with debt and devoid of their assets.