The request has gone unheeded and preparations are underway for setting up still more tents. "Organizations here work according to their own will rather than according to our needs," commented District Education Officer Hari Aryal. "We need help to build permanent shelter with tin sheets. These tents are prone to wear and tear and we can't be changing them every other month."Meanwhile, owing to the increased inflow of INGOs here, rents have sky-rocketed. Whereas a room could have been rented for rs 2,000 before, one now has to pay a minimum of 5,000. Similarly vehicles that could have been hired for Rs 200,000 per month now charge 400,000.
"Why hasn't any investigation been launched into the violation of regulations that were in place even before the earthquake?" asked Kishor Jung Thapa, district chief of the Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights.
According to Thapa, house owners, who never paid their taxes to the government, are now renting out their homes to INGOs for hundreds of thousands. Prices are already rising because of this and there will be long-term consequences also, he said. He also complained about the passiveness of the district administration in this regard and the inability of the municipality to bring tax-evadng home owners to book.
Currently, more than 15 INGOs are working here for the earthquake victims. The Rs 15,000 in cash that the government had pledged to those rendered homeless by the quake has already been distributed. But locals are agitated over the unequal distribution of aid and relief materials. "The VDCs for which these organizations have taken responsibility are flooded with relief whereas the ones under the District Natural Disaster Management Committee have gotten just the Rs 15,000 promised by government," said Nepali Congress vice-chairman for the district, Mohan Pokharel. He complained that this unequal distribution was creating disparity among the locals.
The parties concerned also expressed sadness over the way media was just focusing on the rotten rice delivered by WFP at Laprak rather than working on improving the situation. "There are difficulties in transport, storage and distribution of food materials. And the organizations are now more interested in activities that don't involve food," said District Agriculture Development Office chief Tirtha Kumar Shrestha. Officials harbor prejudice against the quality of materials brought in by the international organizations, but since the Laprak incident, checking has been started for the imported materials before being distributed, he said.
During an interaction program organized between the INGOs serving in the region and locals, complaints from the local side were rife. They requested organizations that are working for the short term not create any feelings of disparity and inferiority among the locals as this could be harmful in the longer run.
Although Gorkha has been ahead in the recovery process with only 10 percent of the government's cash relief still to be distributed, NGO association head Kajiram Khadka complained that work was in progress in collaboration with the bigger INGOs whereas the local ones that had been at work from the beginning were being ignored.
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