Engineers stop working, 1200 resign

Kathmandu, Dec. 21: Engineers have stopped working at the reconstruction sites with half of them already resigning en masse Tuesday.

They cited the height of indifference on part of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) towards the reconstruction works and meeting their demands for their resignation.

"The engineers and overseers who are present in the capital tendered their resignation to the Central Programme Implementation Unit at the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) Tuesday and engineers in the remote areas will submit their resignation within a couple of days," Ramesh Subedi, an engineer deployed at Muchchok VDC of Gorkha, told The Rising Nepal over phone

Last week, more than 2,300 engineers and overseers deployed in the quake-hit districts to assist the victims in house reconstruction had threatened to resign if the government failed to fulfill their demands by December 15.

Since their demands were not met, they had halted their work to protest the government. Many of them came to the capital to put pressure on the government to meet their demands.

A meeting of CPIU-MoUD chief Shiva Hari Sharma, representatives of NRA, Nepal Engineers Association (NEA) and other concerned bodies had promised to address the demands of the agitating engineers a couple of months ago.

"The government turned a deaf ear to our demands. Therefore, we were compelled to resign," said Subedi.

Earlier, the government had decided to provide 25 per cent equivalent to their salary as the remote allowance to the engineers deployed in the far flung areas and 75 per cent of the same as performance allowance.

It had expressed commitment to implementing the agreement before mid-November, but has not yet addressed it.

However, the engineers claimed that their protest was primarily for expediting the reconstruction process, not the incentives for them.

"The engineers don't have any office to provide their services. They have to work under the VDC secretaries who are junior to them. Furthermore, the people want more models of the house other than the government prescribed 17 models. They want to build truss houses but it has not been included in the prescribed models. But the government never heard to our demands and suggestions," they said at a press conference organized in the capital, last week.

Subedi said that the engineers particularly faced problems in distributing the second installation of the house reconstruction grant.

"The NRA has yet not sent us the check list required to provide the second installment of the money to the quake-hit households. Engineers have been receiving dozen of phone calls every day but they can't do anything regarding the money," he said.

Immediate past president of the NEA Dhruba Thapa said that the government failed to address the demands of the agitating engineers who were forced to work under poor working conditions.

He criticized the NRA for being indifference towards the sensitive issues of reconstruction.

But, the NRA has directed the agitating engineers to work in their respective fields in collaboration with the District Programme Implementation Units under the MoUD, and threatened of stern actions against them if they continued to create obstructions to the reconstruction works and play with the sentiments of the quake-affected families.

NRA deputy-spokesperson Dr. Bhishma Kumar Bhusal said, in a press statement, that the reconstruction body was concerned about fulfilling the demands of the technical human resources deployed in the 11 quake-hit districts.

He claimed that the reconstruction body had decided to set the provisions for the remote and performance allowance in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, and it had held a discussion with the NEA regarding the issue.