National
Post-quake recon: Authority expands housing aid lists
The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has included 2,078 additional households in the list of beneficiaries for state aid to reconstruct private homes following re-survey of the areas affected by the earthquake in 2015.The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has included 2,078 additional households in the list of beneficiaries for state aid to reconstruct private homes following re-survey of the areas affected by the earthquake in 2015.
The Authority has added 2,063 families to the list of beneficiaries to retrofit houses damaged by the devastating earthquake.
Families from Aarukot and Ajirkot rural municipality in Gorkha; Sunkoshi and Indrawati rural municipality in Sindhupalchok; and Budhanilkantha, Chandragiri, Gokarneshwor, Kirtipur, Nagarjun, Shankarapur, Tarkeshwor and Tokha municipalities in Kathmandu have been included in the list.Quake-hit families from Kathmandu Metropolitan City also have been included in the list, the NRA stated.
The NRA had added 5,344 households from 18 rural municipalities and two municipalities to the list of beneficiaries in the last of week of May. A total of 5,501 families were also entitled to the grant for retrofitting.
The authority had initiated re-survey process based on complaints from a number of households in several quake-affected districts that they had been left out of the list of beneficiaries despite meeting the government criteria. A recent NRA Executive Committee meeting had made the decision after reviewing the survey reports. According to NRA Information Officer Manohar Ghimire, 332 engineers were deployed between mid-August 2017 and mid-December 2017 for the re-survey that covered as many as 130,000 households.
Ghimire said it took longer to verify the real quake victims as the number of households filing application was significantly high. The NRA said it would complete the process by mid-June and dispatch the names of additional beneficiaries to the local level authorities.The grant agreement will be signed the newly-enlisted beneficiaries based on the recommendation of the local authorities, the Authority said.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2015 earthquake, the government decided to provide Rs200,000 per household in 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 amount is being disbursed in three instalments to ensure that the quake survivors rebuild quake resilient homes that comply with the government criteria.The government has also decided to disburse Rs100,000 for retrofitting the quake-impacted structures in 14 districts worst affected by the earthquake.