Tuesday, September 19, 2017

NRA fails to complete resurvey within deadline

The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has failed to complete resurvey – of individual homes damaged by the devastating earthquake – by September 16 deadline.
The reconstruction authority had mobilised 332 engineers in the 14 worst hit districts to resurvey some 128,000 homes.
The authority accepted that it could not complete the task on time due to various problems at the local level. The authority also blamed building compliance set by itself for the delay.
The authority has made it mandatory for all the houses to follow a set of building safety guidelines to ensure the structures are quake-resilient, a large number of house holds have not followed the building directives.
The engineers – deputed to survey the underconstruction homes – could not issue approval for building grant as a result.
The government had decided to provide Rs 200,000 to each household as a building grant after the devastating earthquake two years ago. The grant later was increased to Rs 300,000 to be paid in three instalments – Rs 50,000; Rs 150,000 and Rs 100,000 – by the then premier Puspa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda.
Those, who have already constructed their homes without following the authority's guidelines are entitled to get Rs 50,000 for retrofitting. There are some 25,000 households in the retrofitting beneficiary list so far, according to the authority.
The authority spokesperson Yam Lal Bhoosal said that the engineers were still collecting data. "The decision on extending the resurvey deadline would be taken after gathering feedback from all the districts," he said, adding that some 996,162 private homes have been surveyed in 31 districts as of mid-August.
The authority has prioritised Sindhuli, Makawanpur, Kavrepalanchok and Dolakha, followed by other districts including Rasuwa, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.

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