HUMLA, SEPTEMBER 10,

Flood and landslide victims of remote Tajakot Rural Municipality, Humla, have been left in a lurch.

After being displaced by monsoon-related disasters of August 5, scores of families in a number of villages of the rural municipality had received tarpaulin and basic food items as immediate relief.

According to the rural municipality’s Information Officer Bishal Dhakal, houses belonging to 253 families across the local level were completely destroyed in the disasters and they were rendered homeless.

While some of the families are staying under donated tarpaulin, others are sheltering with their kin and acquaintances.

Most of them have lamented the lack of food.

The local body has a total of 18 schools and most of them are said to be at risk of landslide.

“While landslides have damaged Dharmadaya Secondary School, Chandra Prakash Secondary School and Jana Prakash Secondary School, other schools are also at risk,” said rural municipality Vice-chairperson Manju Budha.

“As landslides have also damaged roads between villages, they have obstructed the movement of people,” she added.

“We’ve been living under a tarpaulin after mudslide ravaged our house,” said Kela Damai of Maila in Tajakot Rural Municipality. “As there is no condition for staying put in the house and we don’t have additional land to build another house, we’ve been living in the open in a makeshift tarpaulin shelter, which they got as relief,” she said, demanding that the government rehabilitate her family and others facing the same predicament.

Tajakot Rural Municipality Chairperson Bagdal Malla said initiatives were under way to rehabilitate the displaced lot.

“We are communicating with the provincial and federal governments regarding this,” he said, adding that villages of wards 3 and 4 needed to be relocated.

Tajakot Rural Municipality is three to four days’ trek from district headquarters Simikot.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on September 11, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.