It is heartening to note that the reconstruction of private houses in the 32 earthquake-hit districts in the central and eastern hills has reached its final stage. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) that was established for the post-quake rebuilding with a five-year mandate has made about 83 per cent progress. The devastating quake of 7.6 on Ritcher scale had killed about 9,000 people and damaged about one million houses, education institutions, health facilities and other infrastructures. Launched officially on December 26, 2015, the NRA has only a year left to wrap up its work. About Rs. 293 billion has been spent in the post-quake reconstruction in the past four years. The government has set aside Rs. 141 billion in the current fiscal year 2019/20. Initially, the NRA had to face a lot of criticisms for failing to carry out its responsibilities in an efficient manner because of lack of proper coordination among the relevant agencies and other stakeholders. However, the rebuilding process has now gained due momentum.

According to a news report carried by this daily, the reconstruction body has started working for its exit strategy as its mandate will be over in December next year. While presenting the achievements made by the NRA, its Chief Executive Officer Sushil Gyawali said that a main part of rebuilding private houses, health facilities, offices of the government and security agencies, heritage and local infrastructure were completed. The remaining structures are in the process of reconstruction. The NRA aims to complete the reconstruction of the private houses by the end of 2020. If the works remain incomplete, the reconstruction body will hand over them to the local levels. The NRA has enhanced cooperation and coordination with the newly formed National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority so as to institutionalise its exercise, statistics and organisational memory. The authority has gained hands-on experiences in the fields of disaster management, rehabilitation and reconstruction. That know-how and information could be very useful to the federal and bi-national governments to work in this critical area. The NRA has initiated the process of handing over the existing information system to the federal, state and local governments. The reliable and effective disaster information system is sure to be very useful to all the three governments to cope with the possible disasters in the future.

The NRA is going to hand over the responsibility of heritage reconstruction to the Department of Archaeology and respective local levels. As of now, of the damaged 891 monuments, 387 have been rebuilt and 123 are under reconstruction. However, the rebuilding process of 381 is yet to begin. Reconstructing monasteries has not achieved any significant progress. Out of the 1,320 damaged monasteries, only very few have been rebuilt. Similarly, the local units will take over the responsibilities of building rural roads and water supply. The reconstruction body is in the process of carrying out risk mapping of each local unit. That will be used as the foundation for land use planning, periodic planning and determining house standards. It is imperative to enhance the capacity of local units in terms of enforcing national building code to create quake-resilient houses. So many private houses would not have been damaged if the national building code had been implemented strictly.