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| English: Map displaying Village Development Committees in Chitawan District, Nepal (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Kathmandu must be rebuilt, but the rebuilding has to be as a cultural city. Kathmandu has historic importance. And the heritage must be preserved.
But this tragedy has given the country a very real option to build a new capital city for itself. And I do think Chitwan/Narayanghat is most suited for it.
It has a central location. There is no drinking water issue there. There is no land issue. There is no air pollution issue there. It might be cheaper to build new buildings in Chitwan than to rebuild many of the damaged government buildings in Kathmandu.
Relief and reconstruction are not enough. The country has to seek resurgence from this terrible tragedy. This can also be a point of new departure for the country.
If the state is restructured for federalism, the federal government will be smaller in size, and fewer buildings will be needed.
Most buildings in Kathmandu deemed uninhabitable or unsafe following quake
More than three-quarters of the buildings in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, are uninhabitable or unsafe following the 7.9-magnitude earthquake nine days ago, a new survey has revealed. ...... Assessments of 2,500 buildings carried out by more than 1,000 local engineers during the last four days have revealed that a fifth are no longer habitable and three-quarters need repairs before they can be considered safe....... “The sample is a random one and so representative of the city as a whole. The damage is bad. We are still discovering its extent and will have to do a full and thorough final assessment at some point,” said survey coordinator Drubha Thapa, president of the Nepali Engineers Association (NEA). ....... The new assessment indicates a much greater number of buildings will need repairing than previously estimated by the Nepalese government. Local officials have so far counted 153,000 buildings that are in ruins across the country, with another 170,000 damaged. The government of Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, has already said post-quake reconstruction may cost more than £6.5bn ($10bn). ...... Aftershocks continue to shake Kathmandu, convincing tens of thousands of people who are living under tarpaulins on open spaces that it is still too dangerous to return home. ...... “We have hardly met 20% of the demand of the people. We are having difficulties reaching affected areas due to a lack of vehicles and helicopters,” said Krishna Gyawali, the most senior bureaucrat in Sindhulpalchowk district. ...... “People are furious they haven’t anything,” said Uddhav Timilsina, chief district officer of Gorkha. However tensions have emerged between the international community and Nepalese officials. Major donors and western nations are frustrated by infighting within the deeply divided Nepalese government. .....
“It’s all about control, not coordination. They are not coming together to do the best they can for the people of Nepal,”
said one senior western aid official in Kathmandu. ....... Western officials have repeatedly forced the Nepalese prime minister, Sushil Koirala, 75, to overrule suggestions by ministers seeking to centralise the distribution of aid funds under government control. ...... There has also been a battle for overall responsibility for the disbursement of aid money between Ban Dev Gautam, the minister for home affairs, and the prime minister’s office. There are widespread fears that corruption too may weaken the relief effort....... “Everything is politicised, including many local NGOs,” the western official said. ..... The UN said eight million of Nepal’s 28 million people have been affected, with at least two million people needing tents, water, food and medicines over the next three months.
