ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) – Nearly three months after South Asia’s deadliest earthquake, the U.N. has received less than half the money it requested to get millions of Pakistani survivors through the winter, and the government has received just a fraction of the billions pledged for long-term rebuilding.

Yet officials are being remarkably optimistic. They say they can manage on the money they’ve got, and that most survivors are getting safely through the freeze.

“The issue of the funding remains, but we have just decided to focus on the survivors and figure out what we can do for them with what little we have been given by the international donors,” Ben Malor, the U.N. spokesman in Pakistan, told The Associated Press.

The United Nations says it has received $240.7 million in quake relief, with an additional $19 million in pledges. That’s just 47 percent of the $550 million it said it needed to get survivors through to the April thaw in the high Himalayan mountains of Pakistani-held Kashmir, and the nation’s rugged North West Frontier Province.

Malor said the world body was nonetheless encouraged, a strikingly positive assessment given doomsday predications by U.N. relief operations chief Jan Egeland that tens of thousands of quake survivors could die if the money didn’t come through.

“The vast, vast majority of people have been reached,” Malor said. “I cannot look in the crystal ball and say we anticipate these huge numbers dying.”

Pakistani officials also sound upbeat, despite having received just $250 million in cash out of more than $6.2 billion pledged for immediate relief and long-term reconstruction at a November donors’ conference.

Finance Ministry official Ahmad Javad said the government doesn’t view any delays as the fault of international donors, and is busy preparing proposals for dozens of specific rebuilding projects – a process that takes time.

So far, some $1.5 billion in specific proposals have been made, all of which have been accepted by international lenders, he said.

“More projects are being prepared, and as we progress, the money will keep coming,” he said. “We are hopeful and optimistic that money will keep coming and that the world community will honor its commitment.”

Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan, who is in charge of the relief effort for Pakistan’s government, confirmed that relief funding was going well.

“We are fairly comfortable,” he said.

Despite the optimism, life is by no means comfortable for survivors, more than 3 million of whom lost their homes in the monster 7.6-magnitude temblor. A U.N. assessment earlier this month found that 74 percent of families were living in shelter that was deemed adequate, but conditions were far from luxurious. On average, more than seven people were crammed into each tent, with just two blankets and two quilts per family.

One quake survivor, Khushi Mohammed, said he was grateful to aid organizations and international donors. He, his wife and three children had secured a winterized tent in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, and said they had enough food and clothing to survive.

“Since the quake destroyed our home, we have been relying on these donated things,” he said.

But others voiced frustration.

“Aid agencies and the government are ignoring us,” said Munshi Naimat Ullah, a farmer who lives on a mountain top at Ziarat Gali on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad. He said life would become more difficult in the coming weeks when snows fall, blocking roads leading to their village.