Quake survivors wait in vain for tents, food

CHALIANA, Pakistan, Monday (AFP) - Even in poverty-blighted Pakistan the people of the Neelum Valley are known as a hardy lot. But they say they are at breaking point two months after the quake that razed their mountain homes.

The lifeline road from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, into the picturesque Himalayan valley was severed on October 8 and remains strewn with outsized boulders that look like they were hurled by giants for sport.

As the approaching winter threatens to cut the area off completely, some villagers say they have enough food but do not have tents; others have shelter but lack nourishment; and many are desperately in need of both.

At Arlian Dabbar village, a bone-jarring 27-kilometer (17-mile) drive northeast of Muzaffarabad, 50-year-old Mohammad Arif said he had not received a single tent and got only a little food.

Sitting on top of the rubble of a collapsed tea house, the bearded man said he had been going daily to an army relief camp for a tent for his family but had had no luck yet.

"Every day I walk many kilometers only to return empty handed and I think my turn will never come," he told AFP.

The United Nations warned last week that aid efforts after the disaster that killed more than 73,000 people and left around 3.5 million homeless were on a "knife edge" as the snows draw closer.

Ninety percent of the hundreds of thousands of tents handed out are unsuitable for winter and relief workers and the Pakistani army are racing against time to help survivors build their own shelter.

In the Neelum Valley, military engineers struggle to keep the erratic flow of road supplies to tens of thousands of survivors in the highlands along the disputed border with Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Helicopters including heavy-lift US Chinooks have been bringing supplies daily but the number of affected people exceeds the supply.

People like Arif have been innovative, making a room with sticks on which they spread maize chaff, but others are too tired or cold and wait for handouts.