Last Updated on October 8, 2026 by YeJahan
MUHAMMAD BIN SAEED
MUZAFFARABAD (Oct 8, 2026): Twenty-one years after a devastating earthquake tore through northern Pakistan on 8 October 2005, generations of Kashmiri children are still being forced to take classes in the open air because hundreds of destroyed schools remain unbuilt.
Seven disaster-hit districts across the region continue to live with the physical reminders of that morning. Of the 7,608 schemes sanctioned under the State Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (SERRA) portfolio, only 5,892 have reached completion, swallowing 181 billion rupees in expenditure. Another 811 projects have never broken ground at all.
The human cost of the region’s unfinished 225-billion-rupee reconstruction drive is sharpest in the education sector, where a chronic federal funding shortfall has left 1,096 school projects entirely abandoned or stalled midway through construction. Over two decades on from the magnitude-7.6 quake—which flattened entire towns and crushed an estimated 17,000 students at their desks—the promise to “build back better” has completely dried up for the region’s youth.
The lack of brick-and-mortar classrooms means thousands of pupils must brave biting winter cold, torrential rains, and scorching summer heat just to receive a basic education. For these children, school consists of a threadbare mat laid out on the dirt, a cracked blackboard propped against rubble, or a flapping, leaky canvas tent.
The regional infrastructure backlog extends far beyond schooling. A total of 1,716 projects sit abandoned or part-built across multiple sectors:
• Education: 1,096 schemes awaiting completion or construction.
• Livestock and agriculture: 388 stalled livelihood projects.
• Irrigation networks: 81 incomplete schemes.
• Governance and civic buildings: 62 government office facilities still in limbo.
• Forestry and environment: 44 projects held up.
• Public health: 41 medical centres and dispensaries left unfinished.
Officials in Muzaffarabad point the finger squarely at Islamabad. Delivering the promised closure requires an estimated 44 billion rupees from the federal government. The regional administration needs 20.11 billion rupees simply to wrap up work on 509 schemes stalled midway through construction—including contracts caught in procedural purgatory since the 2021 sign-off freeze—alongside 24.01 billion rupees to break ground on the 811 unstarted projects, among them 501 schools.
When international donors pledged billions in the weeks following the disaster, the official pledge was to “build back better”. Yet for thousands of families in Azad Kashmir, that promise remains trapped on balance sheets and delayed funding dockets more than two decades later.
Copyright YeJahan News Network, 2026
