Pokhara, January 13

With complaints related to relief distribution for earthquake victims increasing, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has initiated investigation in Gorkha district.

“Though various relief items were distributed to victims soon after the disaster, the distribution lacked transparency, the items didn’t reach the real victims, but were instead received by fake victims.

Hence, we launched the probe,” informed CIAA’s regional office Pokhara Chief Dilli Ram Sharma.

A team led by SP Rabindra KC has reached quake-hit sites and is preparing a report on relief distribution. SP KC said, “A team of two section officers, engineers and a team of forest technicians have prepared the report.

As we are still investigating, we will not disclose everything.”

According to SP KC, they formed a team, including Chief District Officer, Local Development Officer, an investigation team formed at the local level, VDC secretaries and locals of Barpak and extensively interacted with the people and concluded that the distribution was not fair.

“As there are many channels of irregularities in the distribution, we are yet to conduct extensive investigation,” said CIAA Chief Sharma at a press meet at his office today.

He said that the irregularity was growing as the government and public bodies were not responsible.

Many complaints are related to education and local bodies, which get comparatively more chunk of the budget, he said.

The CIAA office said that corruption was unabated due to the lack of people’s representatives, political sharing in the name of consumers’ committee, among others.

Cases of irregularities have also been found in social security allowance distribution, said the office.