This year not one dollar was spent on the still desperate Bam earthquake victims

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Fars, the regime-run news agency reported that Mohammad Setaayesh, the Director of Welfare Organization of the Province of Kerman has announced that the most difficult problem in Bam* is the lack of social services and communal assistance for addiction, poverty and disability. This organization also stated that this year, not one dollar has been allotted for the ongoing treatment of the ill and helping the needy.

Setaayesh said: “Poverty, addiction, joblessness, depression and anxiety which have been exasperated by the tardy pace of clean up and reconstruction plague this community. Nearly two years after the earthquake and the fact is that the amount of disaster damage we have sustained here is more than other countries’ average. The unbelievable abuse of children in Bam is also another blow to the already delicate social fabric; though we have not been able to get the correct numbers, we estimate somewhere around 5000 children in the town of Bam were orphaned by the earthquake and approximately 4000 of those are in dire need of assistance and shelter. 3700 disabled, 3000 families without a breadwinner also require the same government disaster relief that the orphaned children require. Helping these people necessitates a budget of about $140 million and so far this year we have not received one dollar.” READ MORE

A powerful earthquake struck southeastern Iran on December 26, 2003, killing over 43,000 people, injured 20,000, left 60,000 homeless and destroyed much of the city of Bam. The USGS National Earthquake information center is reported a magnitude of 6.6 for the quake, which was located just southwest of the city. About 60 percent of the buildings in Bam were destroyed. The old quarter and a 2,000-year-old citadel (severely damaged by the earthquake) were built primarily of mud brick.

Editor’s note: It is important to state that the Mullahs (during the Khatami administration) embezzled hefty sums of money that had been specifically collected for the victims of the Bam earthquake that was generously donated by people around the world, corporations, relief funds and foreign aid. Things such as strong, warm tents that had been delivered to Iran from Germany to shelter the cold and traumatized victims of the earthquake during the winter nights were stolen by the regime’s racketeers and sold for huge profits; the earthquake victims were given cheap rag tents instead.