KATHMANDU, June 25:Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who is also chairman of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) Directive Committee, has expressed serious dissatisfaction with the NRA for failing to carry out result-oriented reconstruction and rehabilitation work even 15 months after the devastating earthquakes of April and May last year.

During a meeting of the committee at Baluwatar on Friday, the prime minister criticized the NRA officials for not expediting the overall task of reconstruction and rehabilitation in such a way that the quake victims would feel some respite during the monsoon and other adverse weather situations.

His displeasure comes at a time when the opposition party Nepali Congress has rocked Parliament, fiercely criticizing the government for the delay in reconstruction and rehabilitation.

“The prime minister's concern was that the reconstruction and rehabilitation work has not yielded any results even 15 months after the disaster. He said it was high time the victims actually felt that the government was supporting them, that the NRA was really doing something for them,” NRA Secretary Madhusudhan Adhikari said.

According to Adhikari, as NRA top officials, including CEO Sushil Gyewali, briefed the prime minister and the other office bearers, the prime minister said their hard work might in itself be good but that seemed meaningless as the victims in the quake-hit areas had not been able to feel any relief so far.

The prime minister also strictly instructed the NRA officials to promptly start their survey in the three districts of the Valley as the quake victims were frustrated by NRA's failure to even start that process, let alone provide them the grant amounts and any other support.

 Prime Minister Oli asked NRA to immediately expedite the grant distribution process in the 11 most-affected districts. As of now, NRA has released only the first tranche of the grant amount to 5,841 households out of the total 533,454 households  in the 11 districts identified as eligible for the grant.  

 
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