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| Welcome
to Petarian - Abdalian Relief Efforts
Progress
Report of Oct 13, 2005
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I
want to firstly salute the advance team
of around 20 people that finally arrived
at Rerah Bazar which is the main point near
Samni village today. Under normal circumstances,
this is a journey of only 5-6 hours. But
it took our convoy almost 18 hours to get
there. The time taken was far beyond our
expectations. Apparently there are too many
problems on the road, and they had traffic
jams in several places. They have started
to set up the field base with the supplies
they are carrying. They are carrying 3 satellite
phones with them, which allowed us to keep
contact with them all along. We were concerned
about the safety as well, since there have
been several cases of looting by both needy
people as well as criminals. Therefore,
we sent armed guards with the convoy.
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The
work we have taken on is probably more difficult
in some ways. Most of the people are simply
going to the cities to dump their relief
goods, i.e. to Balakot, Rawlakot, Muzaffarabad,
etc. But hardly any relief is getting to
the villages. Thus, our effort will be one
of the few that are aimed at the people
in the hills.
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Our
main problem has been tents. Even the first
lot of tents got lost. The supplier claims
that the Army guys confiscated the truck
between Lahore and Islamabad. The goods
have been lost for over 24 hours now, although
we paid for them 100% in advance. Maybe
the vendor is lying. He may have gotten
more money from someone else and he diverted
our consignment to them. There is so much
of dishonesty around here unfortunately.
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Several
friends who had been sending their goods
to the towns have abandoned those efforts
and are now diverting the goods to us. This
is good for us, since this will mean we
can use our cash donations more judiciously.
One friend delivered a Suzuki load of foodstuff,
etc today, while we will get a donation
of 2 truckloads of goods tomorrow morning
insha Allah.
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Our
Control and Command Center has been fully
operational today.
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We
got several more commitments and pledges
for funds today.
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Five
doctors from Karachi arrived this morning.
We hope to get them out to the field by
tomorrow. They will leave with the next
consignment of goods.
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Another
4 doctors and 3 assistants are being sent
by AMZT company in Karachi, which is also
run by a Petarian.
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Lastly,
we now have the support of another organization.
This is the HVAC (Airconditioning) Society
of Pakistan. Tajammul Bhai did a good job
in getting them on board.
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Ikram
has been able to come to an agreement with
the Hidaya Foundation in USA to transfer
relief goods to us.
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