“It is proposing the wrong solution for a lot of people,” said Noll Tufani, Nepal country director for Build Change, a charity specialising in disaster-proofing. Building quake-proof homes was a condition of the $4.1 billion pledged to Nepal by international donors under the tagline “build back better”. A year on, millions of Nepal quake survivors wait for aidThe National Reconstruction Authority, the government agency overseeing the rebuilding effort, only approved retrofitting midway through last year. “We can live like we used to… and are not forced to take on large debts to rebuild,” he said. The government says it is on target to complete reconstruction by 2020, but faces an estimated $1 billion shortfall for rebuilding homes alone.

Source: The Express Tribune April 23, 2018 03:45 UTC