Around 150,000 earthquake affected households are expected to move in to newly-built homes before Dashain, the most widely celebrated festival in Nepal that falls in the month of September this year, the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) said. The agency mandated to carry out the post-earthquake reconstruction has made such assumption based on the progress achieved in the rebuilding of the private homes.

According to the NRA, construction of around 40,000 homes has been completed, with more than 110,000 under construction. While the progress achieved in the past 26 months does not seem to be up to the mark, the authority said the data included that of homes which were built in compliance with the earthquake resilient designs set by the government.

In view of house owners whose structures are not compliant with the government set guidelines, the NRA has decided to extend an additional grant worth Rs50,000 to those willing to make

structural adjustment for making those home earthquake resistant.

“Armed with adequate resources after the clearance of several policy bottlenecks, we are optimistic that around 150,000 households will get to celebrate Dashain festival in their new homes,” said NRA Chief Executive Officer Govind Raj Pokharel. He added that the 10th NRA Steering Committee meeting’s decision to empower the authority had helped the reconstruction process gather momentum.

For ensuring timely construction, the NRA had recently set the deadline of mid-July 2018 for collecting entire tranche of housing grant. In the immediate aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, the government decided to provide Rs200,000 per household as private housing rebuilding aid, which was later increased to Rs300,000 to be distributed in three instalments—Rs 50,000, Rs 150,000 and Rs 100,000.

The NRA believes that the time-bound schedule will help in convincing the beneficiaries to be proactive in the reconstruction process. In the absence of schedule, beneficiaries were of the view that they can initiate the rebuilding process any time.

According to NRA records, 625,822 beneficiaries have signed grant agreement with the government. Among them, 594,150 beneficiaries have collected the first tranche, 52,166 the second tranche, while only 2,734 has received the thirdinstalment.