ISLAMABAD: A paralyzed Pakistani man who was gifted a double-story, four-bedroom house by the United Arab Emirates government in 2018 said on Saturday he was thrilled to once again have a home after his previous abode was destroyed in a devastating 2005 earthquake.

Father of six, 48-year-old Ijaz Ahmed resided on the outskirts of the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad when an earthquake considered one of the deadliest in South Asia hit, destroying his house beyond repair.

In 2016, he reached out to an employee at the UAE’s embassy in Islamabad and submitted a request to the Emirati government for assistance in building a house. His application was accepted and the Dubai-based Mohammed bin Rashid Al Makhtoum Foundation constructed the home, which was handed over to Ahmed in April 2018.

This is the only time the Emirati government has gifted a private home to an earthquake affectee.

“I was living with my five daughters in a make-shift house after the earthquake as I had no resources to rebuild my own,” Ahmed told Arab News, adding that the UAE ambassador to Pakistan had paid him a congratulatory visit on May 2. “This is a lovely gift to me from the UAE government.”

“The #UAE Ambassador in #Islamabad, with the support of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Humanitarian and Charity Est, fulfils the wish of a Pakistani special person Ejaz Ahmad by providing him a fully furnished home in #Muzaffarabad,” the UAE embassy in Pakistan said in a Twitter post on May 2.

The brand new concrete house has been built in the center of Muzaffarabad city, just a few yards away from schools that Ahmed’s children now attend.

Ahmed, who was paralyzed in a road accident in 2007, belongs to one of more than 500,000 families affected by the October 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

The UAE government has regularly helped Pakistan in earthquake rehabilitation work in Kashmir. In 2009, the Emirates constructed the $29 million 350-bed state-of-the-art Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Hospital in Muzaffarabad on the site of a destroyed army hospital that had served the area before the earthquake.