"I am too scared to sleep inside my house," Dhakal says. "It can collapse even if a mild earthquake hits us again. I feel rather safe inside the hut." [break]
Dhakal´s clay-stone house was badly damaged when a 6.8 magnitude earthquake jolted parts of Nepal, especially in the east, on September 18. Dhakal has yet not been able to repair the damaged house or build a new one.
"I have no money to repair my damaged house," he says. "The relief money given by the government was too little. We received virtually nothing."
Although Dhakal sleeps inside the hut, his elderly parents risk their lives by sleeping inside the damaged house as it is very cold outside in the night. Dhakal has yet not repaired his ruined bathrooms and toilets, too.
Even seven months after the deadly earthquake, hundreds of families are still forced live either outside or inside their cracked houses. They say the government has not helped them build new houses or repair damaged ones.
"We fear sleeping inside our cracked house," says Nirmala Sanjel, a resident of Barbote VDC-9 in Ilam district. "But we have no choice."
The District Natural Disaster Relief Committee (DNDRC) of Ilam had distributed Rs 2,000 to the displaced families each. The Ilam municipality had provided additional Rs 5,000 to the displaced families each in municipality area. The victims say they have not got more than that till now.
According to the District Administration Office (DAO) of Ilam, the quake had damaged properties worth Rs 1.37 billion. Altogether 2,175 houses were badly and 4,500 houses were partially damaged in Ilam alone.
Although some of the victims have repaired their damaged houses on their own, hundreds of families are waiting for relief from the government. However, the DNDRC says it has failed to distribute more relief package due to budget crunch. The displaced families have urged the government to provide interest-free loans for building or repairing damaged houses.
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