Jajarkot quake-displaced still stuck in temporary shelters

Twenty-two months since the disaster, thousands of survivors have yet to receive reconstruction aid as damage assessment drags on.

For the past 22 months, Laxman Rawat has been living with his family of eight in a flimsy tin-and-plastic shelter in ward 1 of Rawatgaun of Bheri Municipality in Jajarkot district. Every evening, he worries less about aftershocks but more about what his family will eat the next day. “If the government had built us a permanent shelter, I could have gone to India for work and supported my family,” he said. He earns a meagre wage by loading and unloading goods from vehicles at Rimna Bazar. “Instead, we have wasted nearly two years just waiting. If they had told us to build on our own, we would have borrowed and done it already.”