Rautahat, July 21

A five-member parliamentary team from the Upper House monitored flood-hit areas in Rautahat, today.

Chairman of National Assembly Ganesh Prasad Timilsina led a team comprising lawmakers Khim Lal Bhattarai, Sarita Prasain, Brishesh Chandra Lal and Pramila Kumari to the disaster-struck areas. The team inspected the dams of Lal Bakaiya and Bagmati rivers, and an Indian dam adjacent to Gaur Municipality. The team members also participated in a programme held to collect suggestions from victims in Gaur.

At the programme, NA Chair Timilsina said the team reached flood-hit areas to collect suggestions from flood victims and provide recommendations to the government on disaster management for carrying out effective rescue operation, relief distribution and future course of actions to be taken. He added it was necessary to coordinate with federal, province and local level governments to address the problems of inundation and floods permanently.

Timilsina urged all political parties to help victims by keeping aside their personal or political interests.

Federal lawmaker of Rautahat Constituency No 3 Deb Prasad Timilsina said the condition of flood-hit areas got worse after the government failed to pay attention to the problems faced by victims on time despite lawmakers drawing the attention of the Parliament regarding inundation and floods in Rautahat earlier.

Federal lawmaker Rekha Jha and Province 2 Speaker Saroj Yadav, among other lawmakers, said initiatives had to be taken to prevent such destruction from occurring in future.

Chief District Officer Kiran Thapa informed the lawmakers that eight children — six boys and two girls — had lost their lives while two persons had gone missing in the district. CDO Thapa presented statistics of the affected areas to the lawmakers.

As many as 15 houses were damaged and more than 70,000 households were affected due to flood in the district. He clarified that the centre, provincial and local level governments, UNICEF and RDC, among other organisations, had been helping flood victims in different ways.