New York, October 18:

International Labour Office (ILO) on Tuesday said urgent steps were needed to create employment in Pakistan, where over 1.1 million jobs may have been lost after the October 8 earthquake.

“Reports of widespread destruction show that the livelihood of millions of people are threatened or have been destroyed,” said ILO director-general Juan Somavia in a report released in Geneva on Tuesday. Over 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 7.6 magnitude quake in Pakistan, while over 1,400 died in India. “As humanitarian and reconstruction efforts proceed, we must begin working immediately to ensure that initiatives are established to monitor and create decent and productive employment and rebuild peoples’ livelihoods.”

An initial assessment conducted following the South Asian earthquake indicated that it destroyed infrastructure and shops in affected towns in the region - including North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan administered Kashmir. Besides loss of human lives, there was heavy casualty of livestock and agricultural implements required for income generation in the rural areas. The assessment report said residents of the badly affected parts of Pakistan would require “substantial support to rebuild their income-generating prospects”.Compounding the devastation was the fact that the areas hit are amongst the poorest in Pakistan, the ILO said.

The ILO estimates that total employment in the affected areas was around 2.4 million at the time of the disaster. Over two million of these workers and their families were living below the poverty line with less than $2 per person per day before the disaster struck. 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.”

“By losing their employment, even for a short period of time, workers in the affected districts have likely already fallen into extreme poverty,” Somavia said. Before the quake, over 1.4 million workers in the area were engaged in agricultural activities, an estimated 40 per cent or more of whom are now without work. Livestock which provides essential dairy products and the animal power to cultivate the land has also suffered badly.