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Asghar Ali’s damaged house in Chittian Hattian. — Dawn
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RAWALPINDI: His income gone, and house creaking, middle-aged Asghar Ali sits worrying how to save his house that bore the brunt of the terror bombing of the Imambargah in Chittian Hattian last week.
“My six-member family is now confined to a small room of our three-marla house, and I have no money to repair it,” he tells Dawn.
Asghar, 45, looked so forlorn. The bomb also hit his source of income. The few students he used to coach at his house for a living have stopped coming.
“City administration had assured me the day the tragedy happened that building department men will visit my house to assess the damage and help with the repairs. But no one has turned up to this day,” he said.
His misery was visible to all though. Bed sheets hung over blown out doors and gaping holes could not hide it.
His neighbours, also hurt by the bombing of Imambargah Abu Muhammad Rizvia, had their own grievances.
“We don’t want money. But the authorities should arrange repairs of our damaged houses, if for nothing else to avoid the tragedy of the houses caving in,” said Moazzam Ali, 30, who works as a salesman in Raja Bazaar.
“Cracks that appeared in houses already in bad condition can open up and bring that tragedy,” he said.
Another resident of the narrow street, Muhammad Nawaz, observed that many houses suffered damaged but those directly opposite the Imambargah suffered most.
Custodian of the targeted Imambargah and local PPP leader, Ibne Rizvi, agreed with him. The hurt residents were poor people and expected the Punjab government to compensate their losses.
Residents injured in the bomb blast were not receiving proper treatment in government hospitals. “One of my relative admitted to the Benazir Bhutto Hospital was not given a room,” he said.
“Conditions in the District Headquarters Hospital were such that relatives of the three injured admitted there shifted them to a private hospital and the Combined Military Hospital because the doctors who attended them on the blast night never returned to examine the wounds they had treated,” he added.
Indeed, most people in the locality contrasted what they called “the Punjab government’s generosity in compensating the terror victims in upscale areas” with “complete disregard of the needs of the poor victims of lowly Chittian Hattian”.
They pointedly recalled the pains the Punjab government took to compensate more than 100 traders for the losses they suffered in the sectarian violence in Raja Bazaar in November 2013.
And last month, the provincial government handed Rs2 million each to the heirs of the two victims of the Peshawar Army Public School terrorist attack belonging to Rawalpindi district just after their funeral prayers.
District Coordination Officer Sajid Zafar Dall was not available for comments on their grievances.
Rawal Town Administrator Imran Qureshi, who also holds the Office of Additional District Collector General, however, informed that the Punjab government announced Rs0.5 million for victims, Rs75,000 for those who received major injuries and Rs50,000 for those who received minor injuries.
Strangely, there were no directions from the government for the repair of houses damaged in terrorist attacks.
Published in Dawn January 15th , 2015
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