The government of India, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) today signed a partnership agreement to expedite the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Nepal.

The agreement is a part of implementation modalities for the post-earthquake housing reconstruction project worth $100 million, which was signed in August 2017 between Nepal and India. The earlier agreement envisions the Indian government’s support for the reconstruction of 50,000 private houses in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts.

As the implementation modality of the project stipulated appointment of consultants to provide socio-technical facilitations for quake beneficiaries to reconstruct their houses in the two districts, the Indian Embassy in Nepal today appointed UNDP and UNOPS for providing the concerned socio-technical facilitation to the identified house owners in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts.

The partnership agreements were signed by Ajay Kumar, deputy chief of mission, Embassy of India, Kathmandu, on the behalf of the Indian government, and by Renaud Meyer, country director of UNDP, Nepal and Sanjay Mathur, regional director of UNOPS Asia Region.

Under the agreement signed today, India will provide $16.2 million to the two UN agencies — $8.79 million to UNDP and $7.41 million to UNOPS.

The UNDP will provide facilitation to 26,912 house owners in Gorkha while UNOPS will cover 23,088 houses in Nuwakot. The three-year project is expected to help beneficiaries ensure that their new house structures comply with government norms and are quake-resilient.

Addressing the signing ceremony, UN Resident Coordinator Valerie Julliand thanked the Indian government for extending the support and entrusting the UN system to deliver the service. “We have learnt from experiences around the world that disasters like this tend to disproportionately affect socially and economically vulnerable people. This project will address the special needs of those populations and make them resilient to disasters in the future,” she said.

On the occasion, Manjeev Singh Puri, ambassador of India to Nepal, said that the partnership agreement with UNDP and UNOPS will enhance the availability of technical know-how and expertise to house owners in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts to rebuild their houses with earthquake-resilient features.

The signing ceremony was also attended by CEO of National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), and senior officers of NRA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, among others.