Jul 28, 2016- The devastating earthquake in April 2015 left 533,045 families homeless. Since the disaster, there have been two successive coalition governments, and now a third one is about to take over following Prime Minister Oli’s resignation. However, the homeless families are still without their newly constructed houses as they face the second monsoon and landslides even though the international community had pledged $4.4 billion in June 2015. The US and India have even promised additional funding. Contrarily, the government and major political parties are continually going off on a tangent with their insatiable and unethical political games and egotism to grab power, forgetting national dignity and how urgently the post-quake rehabilitation and reconstruction programme should be implemented.
Considering a history of dismal progress in implementing national infrastructure projects and underperformance in conducting programmes under the budget, it is speculated that successive governments, bureaucrats, planners and technocrats do not have the required capacity to carry out rehabilitation and reconstruction projects. This assumption is further reinforced by the fact that large quantities of supplies are still languishing in warehouses at Kathmandu airport due to managerial ineptitude to even distribute them to quake victims. Tonnes of supplies have already been destroyed. It is illogical that the government has been preparing to sell the rice donated as aid for quake victims instead of distributing it to them.
Poor performance
Further, it took the government nearly six months after the earthquake to form a National Reconstruction Authority and name a CEO in September 2015. The CEO had barely taken office when another head was appointed in December 2015 after the CPN-UML came to power, pointing to political obduracy and ineptness. Besides building houses for the homeless, the government is yet to start work on reconstructing the iconic Dharahara Tower and Kasthamandap, which is of immense historical and cultural importance. The families living under tarpaulins are least concerned about the on-going political debate on the number of instalments of relief funds distributed. They urgently need prefab houses or a few bundles of corrugated metal sheets, wood or metal poles and beams, doors and windows and a few bags of cement along with technical supervision and subsidised skilled labour. Providing food for work to enable families to contribute unskilled labour during the construction period would also be a truly humanitarian act.
International donors have been criticised for the conditions that accompany their aid. They include donor-driven priority funding, cumbersome processes, very high accountability standards and rigidity. However, aid recipients often forget that donors also have to answer to their prime sources of contributions. Insistent behaviour and the absence of engagement on either side could only delay the whole process. Politically motivated renegotiations to alter any grant agreement conditions such as lowering the number of tranches from three to two, as happened after a weeklong obstruction of the House by the opposition Nepali Congress to pressurise the coalition government, may only weaken credibility and cause inordinate delays in completing project activities.
The government has not been convincing in mobilising additional resources to close the substantial funding gap in line with the grant agreement documents. Likewise, it is uncertain how efficiently and effectively the government is prepared to deliver payments in several tranches to all the eligible quake victims so that they can rebuild their homes without delay. Apparently, cost overruns and reported external interference leading to political instability in Nepal, if true, are another factor slowing down the rehabilitation and reconstruction mission.
Leading to a fiasco
The homeless families in the 14 districts hardest hit by the quake, which include Gorkha, Sindhupalchok, Dhading and Dolakha, should not have to suffer any more due to political debates and inaction besides passiveness and rigidity of the international donor community. Recurring delays caused by the tendency to ‘put the cart before the horse’ and lack of sincerity is absolutely unaccountable and unacceptable. This could damage the dignity of the homeless families including children, women and the elderly. Many homeless children are also at high risk of human trafficking.
The current situation reminds us of the bitter experience of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin fighting for democracy who were left to languish in camps for almost two decades. Nepal and the international community including the UN could neither repatriate them with dignity nor rehabilitate them in Nepal by providing them shelter and livelihood opportunities despite their keen interest to return and live in their own homes. Surprisingly, they were provided asylum by countries such as the US, Canada and Australia.
Next, as a preliminary step to aid the government of Nepal, the US initially granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to earthquake victims in the name of family reunion. Therefore, trying to manage the earthquake reconstruction and housing construction for homeless families by politicising it for petty political gain and inexcusably delaying it without any sincere hard work and tangible results in time may eventually end in a myth or fiasco. It may take a different turn altogether at the cost of national dignity. The post-quake rehabilitation and reconstruction programme should be conducted intellectually, ethically, unremittingly and with spiritual instinct by the government and all political party leaders in unison and with solidarity.
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The homeless families in the 14 districts hardest hit by the quake, which include Gorkha, Sindhupalchok, Dhading and Dolakha, should not have to suffer any more due to political debates and inaction besides passiveness and rigidity of the international donor community. Recurring delays caused by the tendency to ‘put the cart before the horse’ and lack of sincerity is absolutely unaccountable and unacceptable. This could damage the dignity of the homeless families including children, women and the elderly. Many homeless children are also at high risk of human trafficking.
The current situation reminds us of the bitter experience of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin fighting for democracy who were left to languish in camps for almost two decades. Nepal and the international community including the UN could neither repatriate them with dignity nor rehabilitate them in Nepal by providing them shelter and livelihood opportunities despite their keen interest to return and live in their own homes. Surprisingly, they were provided asylum by countries such as the US, Canada and Australia.
Next, as a preliminary step to aid the government of Nepal, the US initially granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to earthquake victims in the name of family reunion. Therefore, trying to manage the earthquake reconstruction and housing construction for homeless families by politicising it for petty political gain and inexcusably delaying it without any sincere hard work and tangible results in time may eventually end in a myth or fiasco. It may take a different turn altogether at the cost of national dignity. The post-quake rehabilitation and reconstruction programme should be conducted intellectually, ethically, unremittingly and with spiritual instinct by the government and all political party leaders in unison and with solidarity.
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