Sindhupalchowk, April 24

Sindhupalchowk was one of the districts worst affected by the devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015. However, locals of Bojhini tole in Chautara Sangamchowk Municipality-13, Sindhupalchowk district have done something exemplary that can be replicated in other places where reconstruction of private houses is yet to gather pace.

The case of Bojhini also holds importance because if the eligible housing grant beneficiaries are to meet the deadline set by the National Reconstruction Authority for distribution of grant amount by mid-January of 2019, the reconstruction of private houses needs to be completed within nine-and-a-half months.

Bojhini tole was earlier a part of Thulo Sirubari Village Development Committee, where a total of 1,788 houses had suffered damages. Until October of 2017, only 13 per cent of the houses were under construction. However, in the five-month interval from November to April, 94.5 per cent or 827 houses are under construction and the families that have lived in temporary shelters for nearly three years now are excited about shifting to their new houses.

Reconstruction of houses gathered momentum in Sindhupalchowk after the NRA fixed the deadline of mid-July (later extended to mid-January, 2019) for grant distribution citing that the grant distribution to the quake victims could not go on for an indefinite period. Along with this, the formation of local bodies also helped in deploying the engineers at the local level as

they were accountable to the local bodies and would mark their attendance in the municipality and rural municipality offices.

Moreover, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) provided mobile (trained) masons to help masons and labourers to rebuild by abiding by the safe building norms. JICA has mobilised 548 mobile masons to assist in constructing safe houses.

Masons are mobilised under the Community Mobilisation Programme of JICA, under which they provide orientation to the community-based reconstruction committee. The reconstruction committees are active in expediting the reconstruction works as they meet frequently and discuss the issues they are facing and sort them out, according to Tomoki Miyano, team leader of Emergency Housing Reconstruction Project (EHRP).

Along with availability of engineers and trained mobile masons, locals of Bojhini tole have started to construct similar houses and most of them will be completed by next month. The construction cost of one-and-a-half storied (wall raised from ground floor for roofing and store purpose in upper floor) concrete house costs around Rs 600,000.

Dhana Bahadur Shrestha, a local of Bojhini, said that they have adopted optimum ways to lower the cost. The construction materials (rods, cement, bricks, boulders, among others) have been ferried in trucks from the market jointly by some families. “If we had ferried construction materials individually, the cost would have soared. The 47 families of Bojhini ordered construction materials in bulk, which helped lower the transportation cost as well as the price of the building materials,” said Shrestha.

During construction, the entire community came together, with families helping one another in the building process. Consequently, Bojhini tole — which is around five kilometres away from the highway that links district headquarter of Chautara

and is connected with the highway by fair-weather road — will soon be able to boast of an integrated settlement of 47 similar-looking individual houses.