Gayari tragedy: AJK govt announces Rs5m for victims’ school-going children

MIRPUR:

The government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) will give Rs5 million as reparation to the school-going children of the soldiers who died in an avalanche in Siachen earlier this year.

This was announced by AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed as he paid tributes to the fallen soldiers during a ceremony held in Muzaffarabad on Wednesday. The ceremony was hoted by AJK Assembly Deputy Speaker Shaheen Kausar Dar.

PM Majeed said that in addition to the compensation amount, the government will provide jobs to the children of the fallen soldiers and will also build roads, schools and health centres in their respective areas.

The premier lauded the sacrifices rendered by the Pakistan Army for “safeguarding ideological and geographical frontiers of the country”.

Exactly 140 people were buried alive in Gayari when a huge wall of snow crashed into the Siachen Glacier base high in the mountains in disputed Kashmir in the early hours of April 7, smothering an area of one square kilometre. So far 81 bodies have been recovered from the remote glacier after desperate rescue efforts assisted by foreign teams, including those from the United States.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 13^th, 2012.