ISLAMABAD: A ceremony to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the 2005 earthquake was held at the site of Margalla Towers. A ceremony started with prayers for the those who perished in the powerful earthquake. Families of the Margalla Towers victims and representatives of the civil society laid flowers at the site. Various ceremonies were held all across the country to remember the victims of the powerful earthquake that shook Azad Kashmir and various other areas of the country on October 8, 2005.
The earthquake had Kashmir and areas far and wide in the early morning of October 8, 2005. The 7.6 magnitude earthquake continued for minutes without giving any chance to the people to escape. Schools, hospitals, businesses, roads, bridges, homes, and infrastructure were badly damaged. The earthquake resulted in death of thousands of people and injuries to many more besides heavy damage to the buildings in Azad Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other parts of the country. The massive jolts turned multi-storey Margalla Towers structure in federal capital Islamabad into a heap of debris. It has been 12 years since the deadly 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Pakistan, but owning it to the unfulfilled promises by the government, thousands of physically disabled victims in Azad Kashmir still struggle to live a normal life. One such story is of Muzaffarabad’s Kiran Shehzadi. Shehzadi of Dhanni Mai Sahiba – a rural constituency in Muzaffarabad, having buried under a collapsed school’s building in 2005, received severe injuries to her spine.
Even after learning that she will be physically disabled for life, Shehzadi didn’t lose hope and continued her studies. While her parents were forced to move to the city because of her medical condition, Shehzadi accepted her disability as a challenge and learned to live with it. “Our educational institutions lack proper facilities for disabled students. One of the biggest issues faced by disabled people is that of transportation. I am a private graduate and want to study further,” she said. Shehzadi said that the government had done nothing to help her and other people disabled in the tragedy. “I want the disabled people to be provided rights. Most importantly, I demand employers to obey the government allotted quotas for the disabled people,” she said.
Published in Daily Times, October 9th 2017.
