KAILALI, Oct 13: Building a home has become part of Dharma Singh Kumal’s annual calendar in recent years. He puts up a new house in a new location every year after his existing house is swept away by flooding, and he hopes the new site will not be flooded also.
But tragedy strikes again the very next year and he has been forced to shift his house to five different places. The recent flooding has ensured that he will have to repeat the exercise for the sixth year. “This year also the whole house was inundated and I had to flee for my life. This would not have happened had I found land on high ground, but I don’t have any such land,” rues Kumal of Bhajani-9.
Hundreds more in different Village Development Committes (VDC) of the district have to go through the same ordeal every year. These families have not built solid structures because of the annual disaster and live in thatched huts supported by tree trunks. They uproot the trunk and fix it at a new place after the hut is swept by flood.
Having suffered the same fate every year, they have a singular dream of one day getting a plot of land on an elevated site. “Our house and land are swept by flood every year. We can’t even sleep during the nights from June to October. The government should provide us a safer place,” urges Gidari Chaudhari, 60, of Narayanpur-8.
Locals of VDCs like Lalbojhi, Bhajani, Narayanpur, Dhansinghpur and Thapapur feel that the government does not care about their plight. They would rather that the government provide them a permanent residence instead of spending millions every year in the name of flood relief.
Meanwhile, Nirmal Ghimire reports from Bardiya that district headquarters Gulariya is under threat from the Babai river. A dam recently constructed at a cost of Rs 50 million has been damaged by last week’s flood and the Bhada bridge is also under threat, causing panic among the locals.
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