More than 300 families in Upper Bara need rebuilding assistance — Dawn
In the village of Nangrosa in Upper Bara, Pakistan, more than 300 families of the Surankhel subtribe of the Sipah tribe need financial assistance to rebuild damaged homes. Residents say they returned home in 2022 but are still awaiting an official damage assessment, Dawn reports.
Waiting for damage assessment
According to residents, some families have begun rebuilding their homes on their own due to the lack of a response to repeated requests for financial assistance from the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and the Khyber district administration. They are trying to complete the work before the onset of the harsh winter.
Residents said that the Nangrosa valley was evacuated in early 2012 after the banned Lashkar-i-Islam group took control of most areas of Upper Bara in the Tirah Valley. In 2012 and 2013, residents of several villages, including Nangrosa, Sheikhmalai, Drai Wandi and Sandana, left for Afghanistan through the Mazathal Kandaw pass, located about four kilometres from the Afghan border.
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Lack of registration and a road
Surankhel subtribe representative Haji Bawar Khan said that after returning to Pakistan through the Torkham border crossing, these people were not registered as internally displaced persons because there was no relevant registration point at the border. According to him, as a result, the families did not receive the official assistance available to other displaced people from Tirah and Bara.
Another resident, Sada Gul, said that during the prolonged displacement, hundreds of houses were partially or completely destroyed. He also reported the loss of most livestock and the destruction of irrigation canals on which the community's agriculture and livestock farming depended.
Residents note that Nangrosa still has no road: to transport belongings, take sick people to the medical facility in Sandana and move agricultural produce, they have to cross the Bara River several times a day. They called on the authorities to assess damaged housing, repair irrigation canals, restore water supply and build a road to the village.
