Kathmandu: Hundreds of Nepalese on Sunday held memorial services to mark the first anniversary of last year’s devastating earthquake that killed nearly 9,000 people, as victims still forced to live in tents accused the government of failing to look after them.
Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli laid flowers at the demolished 19th-century Dharahara tower where people gathered to pay homage to those killed when the 7.9-magnitude temblor struck, after a minute’s silence to remember the deceased.
Though the quake jolted Nepal on April 25, 2015, the memorials were being held today in its grim reminder as per the Bikram Era calendar. The quake was extremely devastating for the land-locked Himalayan nation, displacing lakhs of families besides putting a huge dent in the country’s economy. Oli paid tribute to those killed in the earthquake, wishing for the eternal peace of the departed souls as he said the government is distributing eligibility certificates to the 31,19,000 affected people to enable them to avail promised grants to rebuild their houses.
“The government was committed to providing safe shelter to the earthquake survivors by the rainy season. The government was raising temporary community settlements for the difficulty time in view of the coming rainy season,” Oli said. He expressed his government’s commitment to accelerate the reconstruction activities, and assured of speedy distribution of relief amount with assistance on designs and mapping for the reconstruction of safe and quake-resistant houses in the quake-hit districts.
“As we have a very few artisans well-versed in woodcrafts, we need to train more people to reconstruct the quake-damaged infrastructures in their original design,” he noted.
Shortly after the quake, that killed nearly 9,000 people, the government had promised to pay USD 1,850 (around 2 lakh Nepali rupees) to each family whose houses were damaged. The quake and aftershocks that hit central Nepal, including Kathmandu, also injured 22,000 others.
Ramesh Shrestha, whose house was demolished in the quake, said: “I am scared if my family will get compensation at all. It has already been a year.” Around 8,00,000 houses including hundreds of school buildings had collapsed due to the twin earthquakes of April 25 and May 12 that hit as many as 14 districts of Nepal.
Some four million survivors are still living in temporary shelters, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Oli reached the earthquake-devastated site at Dharahara that was completely damaged by the earthquake, here amid a programme organised in commemoration of the great earthquake. A procession led by Nepalese Tourism Minister Ananda Pokharel took round of the city before converging into a gathering at the Dharahara site.
Buddhist monks in maroon robes held prayers at Swyambhunath stupa that was home to a popular temple destroyed in the quake. A small group of about 20 protesters dressed in black took to the streets, chanted “politicians in palaces, public in tents” and “what happened to reconstruction?”. (PTI)
