NEW DELHI: More than 1.1 million jobs may have been lost as a result of the earthquake that devastated parts of Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), the International Labour Office (ILO) said here on Tuesday.

It said labour-intensive job creation programmes were urgently needed to lift millions of people out of poverty that has been aggravated by quake damage.

Loss of livestock

An initial assessment conducted following the October 8 earthquake indicated that there is widespread destruction of most infrastructure and shops in the affected towns — including the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Heavy loss of livestock and agricultural implements required for income generation has been reported.

Residents of the badly affected areas would require "substantial support to rebuild their income-generating prospects."

Compounding the devastation was the fact that the areas were amongst the poorest in Pakistan, the ILO said. It estimates that total employment in the affected areas was around 2.4 million at the time of the disaster and that over 2 million of these workers and their families were living below the poverty line of less than $2 a person a day.

Prior to the earthquake, each employed person in the region also supported on average more than two additional dependants, the ILO said. "This means that the 1.1 million workers who lost their employment not only provided their own livelihoods, but also the livelihoods of an additional 2.4 million people, over half of whom were estimated to be under the age of 15."

The assessment also noted that while the medium and small-sized towns in the area that provided jobs and incomes to almost a third of the population lie in ruins, the informal economy where most people worked in the urban areas had also been destroyed. Rebuilding the minimum of assets to revive the urban informal economy requires urgent support, the ILO said.

In all around 730,000 workers were employed in the service sector (many in the informal economy), while 230,000 worked in industry (comprising construction, manufacturing, utilities and mining). More than half of these workers have likely lost one of their primary sources of income.

Rehabilitation schemes

To meet the needs of the population in the affected areas, the ILO has urged that programmes aimed at generating new employment and other income-producing opportunities be incorporated into the rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes that would need to be immediately undertaken.

These would include employment support services to provide both information and short-term training for the jobs that will be generated through the reconstruction effort; financial and institutional support to rebuild small businesses and income-generating assets in both the rural and urban areas; channelling of financial support from the outside world, including remittances from overseas for meeting urgently needed basic services; and creation of institutional mechanisms to ensure that this happens.

The ILO also cautioned that the earthquake could aggravate the already vulnerable position of children, many of whom may be left orphaned, homeless, and out of school in the wake of the disaster.

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