Donors appreciate Nepal's reconstruction process

Kathmandu, Dec. 6: International donor community Wednesday praised Nepal’s reconstruction process and pledged further support to provide relief to the people affected from the devastating Gorkha Earthquake 2015.

At a meeting of the Development Assistance Coordination and Facilitation Committee (DACFC) under the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), they expressed satisfaction on the overall performance of the Authority and appreciated the progress made so far.

Updating the donors about the recent progress made by the reconstruction body, its Chief Executive Officer Yubaraj Bhusal said the NRA planned to train about 54,000 masons within mid-January next year, in addition to 56,000 already trained.

“Maximizing the vulnerable communities’ access to finances to rebuild their houses is another priority. For this we are devising ways to simplify the banking process to facilitate the earthquake victims in obtaining the government grant from the local rural and municipal offices,” he said.

Appreciating the housing reconstruction efforts of NRA, the World Bank's Country Director Takuya Kamata pledged an additional credit of US $300 million to accelerate the process of rebuilding of private houses.

The UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative Valerie Julliand stressed on the need for better communication mechanism to reach out to the beneficiaries in remote areas.

Rurik Marsden, Nepal head of the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), shed light on the risks involved in the reconstruction process due to the inaccessibility of finances by the most vulnerable poor communities and said that NRA should also consider retrofitting instead of reconstruction where possible.

Muhammad Khan, Deputy Director, Office of Disaster Risk Reduction, Reconstruction, and Resilience of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), termed Nepal's reconstruction process the world's largest owner-driven housing building program.

Loren Lockwood of the Housing Recovery and Reconstruction Platform (HRRP) said that hiring of engineers and masons alone was not enough, as community mobilization is equally important to have effective reconstruction.

Meanwhile, the Flood Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Project under the NRA has briefed the development partners about the Post Flood Recovery Needs Assessment and sought cooperation from them.

The government decided to hand over the responsibility of reconstruction and rehabilitation of flood victims in Tarai to NRA in a recent cabinet decision.

More than 161 people died when a massive flood swept across the eighteen Tarai districts this monsoon.

As per the needs assessment conducted by National Planning Commission, the number of people affected is estimated at 1.7 million while 41,626 houses were fully damaged and 150,510 houses were partially damaged.