Around 7,000 earthquake-affected families in Makwanpur have still not signed the housing aid agreement in absence of land ownership documents.

More than three years have passed since the devastating earthquake of April 25, 2015, and these families have not even begun the first step towards building new homes. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) has included these families on its housing aid beneficiary list, but without landownership documents, they are unable to claim the housing aid that the government offers in three instalments. 

This problem emerged because the concerned families had either been squatting on public land or living without land ownership documents before the earthquake, said Somnath Timalsina, chief of the NRA Project Implementation Unit, at a public hearing organised by the human rights organisation, Insec, on Wednesday.

In some cases, Timalsina said, the persons whose names were included on the list have either deceased or gone abroad for employment.

There are also some technical issues caused due to joint land ownership, he added. 

According to the NRA, there are 4,257 families without land ownership certificates in the district; 213 of them are landless.

Forty-three persons whose names were included on the housing aid beneficiary list have died and 170 are in foreign countries.

Similarly, 81 people have joint land ownership papers.

According to the NRA records, 31,817 families in Makwanpur were included on the housing aid beneficiary list; among them, only 24,887 families signed the housing aid agreement with the NRA.

So far, 23,969 families have received the first instalment of the aid, while 14,815 and 5,757 families have received the second and the third instalments respectively.

Currently, 14,628 homes are under construction in Makwanpur.

Raghunath Khulal, chairman of the District Coordination Committee, expressed concern about sluggish progress of the reconstruction work in  the district.

With the current pace of work, he said, the earthquake-affected families are unlikely to have new homes even after five years.