KATHMANDU: It has come to fore that Kathmandu – a district where the country’s capital is located – was found sluggish in terms of post-earthquake reconstruction. Kathmandu district was the most laggard in the rebuild drive among the quake’s hardest-hit 14 districts due to dense settlement of the people, admitted Raj Kumar Poudel, monitoring and evaluation expert of National Reconstruction Authority’s district project implementation unit.
The unit has also revealed that the country’s first-ever metropolitan city, Kathmandu, is facing plethora of problems in comparison to other 10 municipalities of Kathmandu. As many as 42,499 earthquake survivors were enlisted as beneficiaries in Kathmandu in the initial survey. Poudel informed number of beneficiaries has reached 48,568 with the addition of 6,069 victims acting on complaints. As of now, contract signing was undertaken with 86 percent (41,768 households) of total beneficiaries in Kathmandu.
Those signing grant contracts have received first tranche of Rs 50,000. Number of beneficiaries receiving second installment after developing foundation of the house from first tranche has reached 17,970. So far the number of beneficiaries receiving third tranche after completing their houses has reached 14,084.
Though the number of beneficiaries requiring retrofitting was 907, only two had initiated the works, according to the NRA record. Gokarneswor municipality has witnessed the highest number of houses with reconstruction. There are 2,939 beneficiaries in the municipality. Of them 46 percent beneficiaries received all three trances after completing the reconstruction.
Only 7,561 beneficiaries have so far reconstructed quake-affected houses, which is the lowest in number compared to other municipalities of Kathmandu. The reconstruction drive is taking time in Kathmandu due to availability of land without ownership certificates, tillers, landless squatters, Guthi, government land, forest area and public land.
Sindhupalchowk, the earthquake’s hardest hit district, has seen rapid progress in reconstruction. So far the reconstruction of 67,604 houses was completed in the district. The district had total 88,273 beneficiaries Lalitpur and Bhaktapur districts of the Kathmandu Valley have also seen sluggish progress on reconstruction drive comparison to other 11 districts.
Comment