Two years on, Nepal’s earthquake reconstruction fails to gather speed

Giranchaur is the picture perfect village.

Children play on slides and swings in a small park which sits adjacent to rows of neatly built concrete houses with blue corrugated-iron roofs, complete with solar panels.

Elderly residents tend to vegetables in tiny kitchen gardens, watering their plants from the piped clean water supply. Yellow and pink Buddhist prayer flags flutter in the cool breeze outside the community hall-cum-monastery.

But newly constructed Giranchaur village is the exception rather than the rule two years after a massive earthquake struck impoverished Nepal – killing nearly 9,000 people and disrupting the lives of more than eight million people.

As the Himalayan nation – famed as the home of Mount Everest and the birthplace of Lord Buddha – marks the second anniversary of the quake on Tuesday, sluggish recovery has meant that less than a fifth of destroyed homes have been reconstructed.

“Earthquake reconstruction is a multi-year effort and should remain a high priority for many years to come. It can take time to get it right, and significant bottlenecks in reconstruction remain,” said Tristram Perry from the US Embassy in Kathmandu, which has provided over US$170 million for rebuilding.

“For all those in transitional shelters and who lack safe structures for education and health services, quick progress is important.”