TEHRAN //Iran's government faced criticism from legislators and the public yesterday over its handling of relief efforts after two earthquakes killed more than 300 people and injured thousands.
Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, the health minister, told a session of parliament yesterday that the death toll had jumped by about 50 to 306 after victims died in hospital. More than 3,000 people were injured in the earthquakes, she added in comments broadcast on state radio.
The toll included some 219 women and children, Ms Dastjerdi said, adding that about 2,000 injured people had been released from hospitals soon after the quake because they had only minor injuries.
Members of parliament representing the affected areas complained about the shortage of tents for survivors, the parliamentary news agency Icana reported, and Iran's top legislator, Ali Larijani, stepped into the debate.
"The crisis management headquarters must take broader steps to alleviate these concerns," Mr Larijani, a rival to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and possible candidate in the 2013 presidential elections, said.
Although officials announced on Sunday, less than 24 hours after the disaster, that search and rescue operations had finished and all survivors had been freed from the rubble, some residents expressed disbelief that authorities could have reached some of the most remote villages so soon.
"I know the area well. There are some regions where there are villages that you can't even reach by car," a doctor in Tabriz said yesterday. "It's not possible for them to have finished so soon."
The doctor said he had worked for 24 hours non-stop following the quake, attending to patients from surrounding villages who were rushed to Tabriz for medical care.
"In the first hours after the quake, it was ordinary people and volunteers in their own cars going to the affected areas," the doctor said. "It was more ordinary people helping out than official crisis staff."
The moderate conservative newspaper Asr-e Iran reported that a full 24 hours after the earthquake, some villages had not yet been visited by relief teams.
"(Residents) say that most of the villages have been destroyed and still no tents have been sent, nor has any help been sent for the victims," the report said.
Two large quakes with magnitudes of 6.4 and 6.3 struck East Azerbaijan province on Saturday afternoon, flattening villages and injuring thousands around the towns of Ahar, Varzaghan, and Harees, near the provincial capital of Tabriz.
The earthquakes "should have at most injured 10 people," Bahram Akasheh, a seismologist, told the Iranian Labor News Agency. "A great deal of damage was sustained because of the unsuitable structures in our provinces and villages."
The country sits on several fault lines and is frequently hit by earthquakes. An estimated 40,000 people were killed in 2003 when a temblor flattened the city of Bam in the southern province of Kerman.
Gholamreza Masoumi, a health ministry official and head of the emergency services, said he was concerned about a shortage of makeshift toilets and bottled drinking water that could lead to a spread of disease.
The corpses of farm animals could also contribute to an outbreak, he said.
Images on Iranian state television yesterday showed people in the region sleeping outside in streets and parks, without tents or supplies, as the correspondent said they feared additional aftershocks. More than 50 aftershocks were recorded in the province in the past two days, according to the Tehran-based Iranian Seismological Centre.
Officials said the emergency response to the disaster was rapid, even though relief teams were hampered by the remoteness of quake-hit villages.
"We will rebuild these areas before the start of the winter," Hassan Ghadami, an emergency management official in the interior ministry, told parliament yesterday.
The mud-brick construction of many village buildings was to blame for the wide destruction, he said.
Reza Sheibani, a Tabriz resident who owns a 24-hour pharmacy in Ahar, said the government had acted well in deploying security forces to ensure public order in the panicked hours after the quakes.
Tabriz residents and legislators criticised state-run television's early coverage of the disaster, saying it did not reflect the extent of the damage in the first hours.
The lack of coverage, some said, contributed to a sense that the central government in Tehran did not care much about the people of north-west Iran, most of whom are Azeri Turks, the biggest ethnic minority in the country.
"Even though [on Saturday night] hundreds of people were under the rubble, on the television broadcasts ... there was no mention of the disaster," said Alireza Manadi Safidan, a legislator representing Tabriz, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency.
State television "was busy counting how many medals Iran won" in the Olympics, the doctor in Tabriz said. "They didn't have any reaction to this event."
* Reuters, with additional reporting by Associated Press and Bloomberg News
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
