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Pakistan

Pakistan recruits volunteers for rebuilding quake-hit areas

Islamabad (dpa) - Pakistan has launched a nationwide campaign to recruit volunteers to help reconstruct the quake-devastated regions, a minister said Sunday.

''We have started with 300 groups and these will be sent to affected areas after giving them various types of training,'' deputy minister for Youth Affairs, Mohammad Ali Durrani told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.

Durrani said each group included a carpenter, a mechanic and three helpers who would assist locals in rebuilding their houses in the tremor-ravaged areas of Northwestern Frontier Province and Pakistan's administered Kashmir.

The massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake of October 8 had flattened thousands of houses and displaced millions of people in the mountainous regions. It left more than 86,000 dead and over 100,000 injured.

Following the quake, thousands of Pakistanis rushed to the devastated regions to carry out rescue work as army and could not respond promptly to the calamity.

The minister said efforts would be intensified to recruit more volunteers and especially youth. Opportunities to sign up for the help teams would be set up at post offices, and offices of boy scouts and district governments.

The campaign called ''National Volunteers Movement'' aimed to tap the outpouring of sympathy of Pakistanis long-term so that it could be utilized in other natural catastrophes in the future, he said.

''The earthquake wrought devastation, but on other hand, it has brought unity among us,'' Durrani said.

According to reports, people in the highlands have begun descending into the valleys as the weather is becoming more and more inhospitable, with rains, snowfall, and winter temperatures.

The United Nations has warned that the cold, hunger and diseases could prompt another wave of deaths in the quake-stricken Pakistani areas.

On Saturday, Pakistani government teams and aid agencies began a two-week immunization campaign in the Pakistan's administered Kashmir, administering vaccines against measles, diphtheria, polio and other illnesses to about 800,000 children.

After three days of intermittent rains and clouds, the sky over Kashmir was clear. But meteorologists forecast lower temperatures with cold winds in all affected regions.

dpa kh emc ds

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