Nepal earthquake: Rain, govt cloud relief effort

KATHMANDU: Thousands of quake-affected people across Nepal have been left cold, hungry and bitter in the absence of a relief strategy and sensible disaster management policy. Complaints are coming in from almost every district hit, that government has left them to fend for themselves.
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Sources said it was clear government wasn’t prepared to handle a calamity of this magnitude.Not only lack of coordination among agencies, it wasn’t even clear who’d distribute relief, track aid and channel it. Rameshwor Dangal, joint secretary and disaster focal person at the home ministry was quoted by a local daily saying, “We’ve not prepared integrated information about assistance collected; we’re working on it.”
There’s a row growing with allegations that only those with “connection” are getting help. Reports said though government had released Rs 500 million as emergency fund after Saturday’s cabinet meeting, it had not been able to send the money out due to “technical problems in the banking system.”
In a candid confession, PM Sushil Koirala admitted that rescue, relief and search operations have been ineffective. The post-quake management had been challenging, he said, adding that the government is inundated with requests for help. He blamed “a crunch of logistics and experts” for the slip that’s getting deadlier for people each passing hour.
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Nepal army, now backed by personnel from 10 countries, has launched operation Sankat Mochan but the joint team had managed to dispatch just 2,000 kg of relief material and 800 tents in Nuwakot and Barfok, the villages at the epicentre.
Efforts of the Nepal government have also been hobbled by adverse weather — it rained in Kathmandu on Tuesday, a hailstorm followed shortly after. The terrain is not easy either. That said, disaster aside, government hasn’t reached the country’s remote parts any which way. Swathes of mountainous regions have remained ignored and unattended over the years.
But all agree it needn’t have been so bad. A source said even 72 hours after the temblor hit, local administration in Gorkha wasn’t able to confirm the number of deaths. In Nuakot, where 450 died, nothing had been sent to the families of the dead and suffering. Sujeev Shakya in an editorial in The Kathmandu Post said: “As we look for medicines, tents and water, along with people willing to send money for the same, we do not have a list of certified vendors to whom we can reach out. Nepal’s history of development assistance has been plagued by conferences and report-oriented short-term strategies with a lot of junkets.”