200 health centres reconstructed

The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has said reconstruction of about 200 health centres and 200 schools had been completed by the end of 2016.

Buildings of approximately 169 health centres and 1,200 educational institutions are under construction.

"In addition to that, 50 government buildings have been reconstructed with pre-fabricated materials while 228 buildings are under construction," mentions latest NRA report.

Earlier, NRA chief executive officer Sushil Gyawali had said that the reconstruction of 297 drinking water project and 15 archaeological structures had been completed, and 961 water supply project and 69 heritages were under construction.

"NRA has expedited the reconstruction works of the health and education infrastructures with the aim of completing it within three years," he said.

According to the government policies and programmes for the fiscal year 2016/17, reconstruction of all schools, most of the hospitals and health centres would be completed within three years and private houses in two years while all reconstruction works would be completed within five years as per the five-year action plan of the NRA.

More than 459,886 households have received the first installment of the house reconstruction grant, Rs. 50,000, about 41,311 houses have been reconstructed and more than 18,000 houses are under construction even though the reconstruction body is yet to distribute the second and third installment of the grant.

So far, the government has signed the grant agreement with 544,996 families of 14 districts severely hit by the devastating earthquake in April and May 2015.

"The government has recently approved the grant distribution procedure as per the increased amount for the second and third installment Rs. 150,000 and 100,000 respectively, so the second installment of the grant will be distributed at the earliest," said Gyawali in his clarification.

Delay in the distribution of second installment of the grant money was one of the reasons behind the agitation of the engineers and other technical manpower deployed in the field for the post-quake reconstruction.