Not enough tents in world for survivors

Women and men wait in separate lines for quake-relief under Pakistan military security in Malsi, east of Muzaffarabed in the Jhelum Valley yesterday in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. PHOTO: AFP

Tents are a priority item with around three million people made homeless, many of them forced to live in the open in plummeting temperatures in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and parts of North West Frontier Province.

"It is fair to say the indication is that there are not enough tents in the world available to support the requirements," Andrew MacLeod, chief operations officer in the UN emergency response centre in Islamabad, told AFP.

The UN said it had already exhausted the supply of the vital items in Pakistan, which is itself the world's biggest producer of so-called winterised tents.

"If there is another emergency in the next few months it will be very difficult. So that is a huge issue right now," UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said.

Pitt said it was impossible to give a definitive figure for the number of tents needed, but said authorities were working on a homeless figure of between 2.8 and 3.2 million and of there being an average five members per family.

She said 37,000 tents had been delivered as of Monday night and the Pakistani government has contributed a further 100,000.

"We know that there are approximately another 150,000 in the pipeline but still we believe that it is not going to be enough," she said.

Relief agencies were scrambling to find warm tents from wherever they could before snows begin to fall on the devastated mountain villages of Kashmir and northern Pakistan, the spokeswoman said.

"They are coming in every which way, but tents are large and heavy so taking them in by helicopter is difficult," Pitt said. "We are trying to get them from everywhere. Neighbouring countries are key ... and China, Korea, Singapore, the Middle East, everywhere."