Wednesday, March 28, 2018

NRA plans to run retrofitting campaign for damaged houses in quake

Kathmandu, Mar. 27: The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) said on Tuesday that it was planning to run a special campaign for retrofitting houses damaged by the devastating Gorkha Earthquake 2015.

It has decided to execute a separate campaign for retrofitting private houses that faced minor damage in the tremors but are fit to live in with general maintenance. It has concluded that though there had been significant progress in the reconstruction, retrofitting couldn’t catch the desired speed.

According to the statistics of the reconstruction body, about 24,991 houses in 32 districts are in the retrofitting list.

“Development partner organisations like the DFID, UNOPS and Build Change have agreed to support the NRA in the retrofitting initiative, and we have a plan to train 2,000 technicians and 12,000 masons within two years,” said the NRA.

About 1,000 quake-affected houses will be retrofitted during the training. While retrofitting by the trainees, houses of the deprived communities at risk, as identified by the local governments, will be given priority.

UNOPS has submitted the proposal of the retrofitting programme to the NRA. The Housing, Settlement Development and Local Infrastructure Division of the reconstruction body will study the proposal and send it to the Central Programme Implementation Unit at the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) within a week.

“Currently, the NRA, CPIL-MoUD, UNOPS, DFID and Build Change are developing a curriculum for the retrofitting training, and it will be finalised by the first week of April,” said Prakash Thapa, joint secretary of the Authority.

After preparing the curriculum, training will begin at four different locations.

Makwanpur, Kavrepalanchowk, Sindhuli, Ramechhap and Gorkha have the highest number of houses that need retrofitting while Myagdi, Nawalparasi, Arghakhanchi, Dhankuta and Baglung have less than 100 house each that need retrofitting.

Districts with high retrofitting needs
S.N.
District
Houses
1.
Makwanpur
4,152
2.
Kavrepalanchowk
2,415
3.
Sindhuli
2,408
4.
Ramechhap
2,149
5.
Gorkha
2,019
6.
Okhaldhunga
1,643
7.
Dhading
1,494
8.
Nuwakot
936
9.
Lalitpur
667
10.
Dolakha
637

Source: NRA

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 28 March 2018. 

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