The Government of Pakistan established the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) on October 24, 2005 to take up the mammoth task of rebuilding in the earthquake affected regions spread over 30,000 square kilometers of nine districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and AJ&K. The nucleus staff of ERRA comprises a hybrid of civil servants, armed forces personnel and international consul
tants.The idea behind the creation of ERRA was to bring all efforts and activities, pertaining to post disaster damage assessment, reconstruction and rehabilitation in the affected areas under one umbrella, with a view to providing a fast track and seismically safe reconstruction regimes and solutions. ERRA’s mission is to “Convert this Adversity into an Opportunity” by reconstructing the lost and destroyed facilities, while following highest standards of reconstruction and rehabilitation with the obligation to “Build Back Better”. Main role of ERRA is macro planning, developing selected strategies, financing, project approval and monitoring and evaluation. Additionally, it ensures the required coordination and provides facilitation to implementing partners, whereas physical implementation of the projects is the responsibility of respective governments. ERRA has intervened in 12 different sectors, 3 cross-cutting programmes, and is required to reconstruct over 13,000 projects, (at the cost of over US $ 5 billion) located over more than 30,000 sq km of nine districts of AJK and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
