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| Sunday, 27 January 2002 |
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India
mourns 20,000 victims of killer quake
BHUJ, India, Jan 26 (AFP) - Residents of this western Indian city mourned in silence for the 20,000 people who died in a massive earthquake which struck a year ago on Saturday. Many students and shopkeepers stayed at home out of respect to the victims of the country's deadliest quake in a half-century. The Kutch district, the hardest hit by the disaster, observed two minutes of silence at 8:46 am (0316 GMT) to mourn those killed by the earthquake, which registered 7.9 on the Richter scale and left another 160,000 people injured. Some people offered spontaneous prayers for the dead on the streets, but most residents of this still traumatised district chose to mourn at home, where many still feel the crippling economic effects of the quake that damaged five billion dollars worth of property. The disaster also cast a pall over ceremonies for India's Republic Day on Saturday, with the chief minister of this western state of Gujarat using a ceremony for the national holiday to defend the government's record on helping the victims. "The pace of work is not slow and will not be slowed. Even the industrial belts are coming back to normalcy," Chief Minister Narendra Modi told a crowd of several hundred. Thousands of schoolchildren stayed at home Saturday, with many of them still hesitant to speak of what happened here a year ago. "We have 3,000 children in our school, but only 30 have turned out to celebrate Republic Day. The others are still afraid and carry the trauma of what happened last year on this very day. Even their parents did not want them to come out," said Ramaben Morparia, principal of the Jainacharya Amaramji school in Bhuj. "Only last week a couple of my small students started crying out of fear after listening to the roaring sound of a nearby road excavator. They thought it was one more earthquake. In the immediate post-quake period, I had to get a team of psychiatrists to stabilise some of the children," he added. One place that saw a crowd Saturday was in Anjar, 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Bhuj, where several thousand gathered to share prayers for 200 students who died here when buildings collapsed during the Republic Day parade. "Everyone is finding solace in each other's company as practically every family has lost one or more members in the quake. In fact, they have become even insensitive," said Pappu Thakkar, a hotelier. Thakkar doubted that many here had a full night's sleep. "Everyone has become superstitious thinking of a possible repetition of such a disaster again Saturday," he said. "One can't blame the people as there have been two tremors in the last two weeks already," he said. The government, along with other non-governmental organisations, is reconstructing more than 400,000 houses and says it will take at least three years before the worst hit areas here come back to any level of normality. Many quake victims have been left angry, however, by what they see as the slow pace and paltry size of compensations and charge that the authorities are corrupt. At least 300 residents from 55 villages held a protest outside the district development office in Rapar, some of them on hunger strike, against the government's alleged apathy to their plight. "We have been on a hunger strike for many days now and the authorities are just not bothered or paying any heed. They have even behaved rudely with some of our members," said Visamji Ramji Patel, a villager from Bhachau. The villagers said they had not received even the first instalment of compensation. "The lower level government officials are asking for commissions while giving these villagers what is rightfully theirs," said Dashrath Charakata, a social worker with a local NGO. But government officials said most of the protesters were ineligible for further aid and said every quake victim has received three instalments of compensation. |
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