Tall promises of political parties and candidates will not change their hearts; service delivery will do

The local level election is being held in province numbers 3, 4 and 6 on May 14. There are 34 districts where the first phase of the local level election is taking place to elect several thousand representatives who will be carrying out local level development for the next five years.

These are also the districts worst hit by the devastating earthquake of 7.6 magnitude on the Richter scale twenty-five months ago. According to records around 9,000 people were killed while three times that number of people were injured in the major natural disaster, which had not been experienced in a hiatus of 90 years.

More than half a million private houses and public buildings, including schools, health posts, temples, shrines and historically and archeologically important monuments, were also reduced to rubble. People, particularly in the rural areas, have suffered the two rainy and chilling winter seasons despite the fact that the government had received generous support from international donors.

No tangible progress has been made to bring normalcy to the life of the earthquake survivors even though two governments have been formed along with the changes of guard in the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), which is responsible for carrying out the reconstruction works.

Even the RNA officials have admitted that they have not been up to the expectations to expedite the reconstruction works which should have been completed by 50 percent if the target set by the government is to be reckoned with.

Only 10 to 12 percent earthquake survivors have been able to build houses on financial support extended by the NRA. Others have either built their houses on their own or the rest are still living in the tattered tents which will not protect them in the coming rainy season lasting for four months.

Having been left in the lurch for such a long period, the quake survivors have vented their ire on the local party leaders and cadres when they reached their tent settlements seeking votes for the local level election which is, without any doubt, essential to govern at local level.

The quake victims seem to be more concerned with their safety, health, education for their children, drinking water, provision of food and work opportunity during the coming monsoon, which, as per the past experience, will make their life more vulnerable. Many quake victims interviewed in Kavre’s Irkhu Rural Municipality aired doubts over the required support they would get from the elected representatives at the local level.

They also said they would rather choose to abstain from voting, saying they were busy erecting walls/foundation of their houses with the first installment they received from the NRA. The pace of reconstruction work would have taken momentum in the rural areas had there been an elected body in the past.

As all this has become a thing of the past, the utmost duty of the elected representatives will be to mount pressure on the NRA and local authorities to release the second and final tranche and make available the construction materials like timber so that they can build their houses soon.

Tall promises of political parties and candidates will not change their hearts; service delivery will do.

Forest penalty

The National Park Act has been amended to introduce more stringent provisions regarding smuggling of forest resources with a view to cutting smuggling in Chitwan National Park and other parks of the country.

This was a necessary change because existing provisions had not been tough enough to discourage smugglers from engaging in their nefarious acts – the penalty was a fine of up to Rs.10,000 and a jail term of up to two years.

Now, under the amended legal provisions, a smuggler will have to pay in fine double the value of the smuggled item if it is worth more than Rs.10,000. But if the value is not more than one thousand rupees, the guilty person will have to pay just that much in fine. And for the smuggled item valued between Rs.1,000 and Rs.10,000, there will be a fine equal in value to the smuggled item and a jail term of up to six months.

It is expected that the new provisions will act more of deterrence to the smugglers than the earlier provisions. But mere existence of tough laws and regulations is not enough.

How tough the laws are is an important factor but the tough implementation of the existing legal provisions is even more important. In this respect, there is much room for improvement.