Despite Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s push to hand by October 6 the first tranche of aid to all the families rendered homeless by the earthquakes last year, the National Reconstruction Authority has distributed Rs50,000 to only 432,058 households so far.

This leaves about 100,000 families, eligible for the amount, without the first tranche of aid. The list of the households affected by the quakes in Kathmandu Valley is yet to be ascertained. The government is said to be in the final stages of collecting data on the households that had their homes damaged in the April earthquake.

If the needy in the Valley are added, only about 50 percent of the households have received the first tranche of the cash so far.

PM Dahal, after assuming office on August 4, had made a tall promise of distributing the first tranche of aid to all the eligible households within 45 days.

With about 130,000 remaining to receive the private house rebuilding aid, the prime minister, on September 26, directed the Reconstruction Authority to make sure all the victims received the Rs50,000 by October 6.

The authority had then announced an additional grant of Rs100,000 on top of the earlier pledged Rs200,000. The beneficiaries should now receive the aid in three instalments of Rs50,000, Rs150,000 and Rs 100,000 in order.

The government requires an additional Rs80 billion to fund the extra Rs100,000 in housing aid. But as the NRA estimates that the country would require Rs938 billion

to carry out all the reconstruction works, the government has only been able to acquire Rs272 billion of the Rs343 billion pledged by donors.

During the international donor conference held in June last year, the international community had pledged about Rs440 billion for the rebuilding task.

The donor community has claimed that about Rs100 billion has already been spent on relief operations. The country still faces a whopping funding gap of Rs600 billion.