“What is the use of these people?” the villagers questioned the presence of the lake monitoring team in Hunza, adding that they deserved to be expelled from the area.
“The lake is still there even after six months and we can’t go back to our homes,” they said. A team of experts comprising Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) engineers has been monitoring the landslide-spurred lake since January 4 - the day a massive landslide hit Attabad - to ensure the safety of local people if it bursts its banks.
The villagers who earlier staged a sit-in in the spillway for three days against the insufficient compensation package have now threatened to force the experts and the monitoring team out of the disaster-hit areas on grounds that they have not succeeded in draining the lake that has submerged five villages upstream.
“The rigid attitude of the government has compelled us to take this extreme step,” a villager in Hunza told the media.
“The government is neither accepting our demands for increase in the compensation package, nor is it doing enough to drain the lake which has turned us into IDPs,” said one of the victims of Shishkat village who lost his house and fields to the expanding lake.
About 20 people were killed and many more injured in the landslide that swept away hundreds of houses in the Attabad village.
The experts had declared the remaining part of the Attabad village and its adjacent village - Sarat as ‘extremely vulnerable’ after the landslide, but the victims say that they have now decided to return to their villages at all cost.
More than 25,000 people from villages downstream were shifted to camps after experts warned the government last month that if the lake bursts its banks, a flashflood could sweep away everything that comes in its way.
Meanwhile, landslides continued to rock the Attabad Lake on Saturday, creating fears among the residents living in adjacent villages. People said that they saw dust clouds over Attabad that lasted for hours.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 11th, 2010.
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