Landless quake-victim to get 200k to buy land

Kathmandu, May 8: The government has approved the proposal of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) to provide an additional grant of Rs. 200,000 to the quake-affected households that do not have land to build a house or have lost it in the landslides during the tremors.

The money will be provided to them to buy land to build a house.

In order to provide the additional grant to the landless and families living in risky areas, the reconstruction body has amended its House Reconstruction Grant Distribution Procedure, 2074.

According to NRA spokesperson Yam Lal Bhoosal, the reconstruction body had submitted a proposal to the Cabinet to provide financial assistance to those families whose houses needed to be relocated to  safer places due to the landslide risk posed by the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, and families who have no land and were living on public or forest land.

A meeting of the Steering Committee of the NRA had decided to provide the additional grant to such families, and the government had given a positive nod to the proposal.

This decision will benefit about 12,171 families at an additional cost of Rs. 2.43 billion.

In various quake-affected districts, about 9,420 families have been identified as landless and found residing on the land belonging to the government of forest.

"Likewise, it will help 2,751 families of the settlements at risk of landslides to shift to safer locations," said Bhoosal.

Although the exact number of houses needed to be relocated is yet to be estimated, families in about111 settlements in the quake-affected districts need to be relocated.

Such families need to shift to safer locations of the same district or adjacent areas of another district, and they are not allowed to use the land that they have been using so far.

Those families will get a grant of Rs. 500,000 as they are also entitled to the house reconstruction grant of Rs. 300,000.

The reconstruction body said that earlier there was confusion regarding the houses in the settlement at risk while there was no provision of any grant to those households who had encroached government, forest or public land.

Similarly, the procedure has been amended so as to provide the housing grant to the families that had completed the construction of their houses before signing a grant agreement with the government.

Likewise, families that were separated before the 2015 April 25 and were residing in a separate house will get the house reconstruction grant after verification from the chairman of the respective rural municipality or mayor of the municipality.

Bhoosal expressed the hope that the new provisions would expedite the reconstruction process, especially of individual houses.