Landslide and flood victims will get a significantly higher compensation if Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s announcement to ensure parity in disaster-related relief fund is implemented.
Landslide and flood victims will get a significantly higher compensation if Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s announcement to ensure parity in disaster-related relief fund is implemented.
On Saturday, the prime minister had pledged the landslide affected people in Pyuthan that his government was going to provide them equal compensation as the victims of last year’s earthquake.
As per the prime minister’s announcement, landslide and flood victims will get relief package of Rs800,000, including grant of Rs 300,000 and subsidised loan of Rs 500,000 to rebuild their homes.
However, according to the Home Ministry, families affected by floods and landslide can only get Rs10,000 to rebuild their houses. In the case of death, family member of the deceased can get up to Rs100,000 for cremation as per the Standard on Rescuing the Victim of Natural Calamity and Relief.
In August, the Cabinet had increased the disaster relief package up to Rs100,000 for cremation, terming that the previous provision of providing up to Rs40,000 was insufficient.
Krishna Bahadur Raut, a joint secretary at the ministry, said the injured are provided free treatment in government hospitals and other relief packages are decided on case to case basis.
The Home Ministry has said that it has not received any instruction on increasing the disaster relief.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) informed that it is preparing to instruct the Home Ministry to prepare standard and procedure of relief package
distribution to the landslide and flood victims in line with the prime minister’s latest announcement.
Tankamani Sharma, secretary at PMO said that they were making internal preparations to send a letter to the Home Ministry.
According to the Home Ministry, a total of 1,707 houses were damaged by landslide, floods and heavy rainfall since April 13, the beginning of new Nepali year, until October 2. A total of 250 people died, 179 got injured and 45 are missing.
Prime Minister Dahal has also announced a “special help” of Rs15,000 each to the landslide-hit families to manage their households during the festival.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
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