Kathmandu, December 21: The federal government has declared Ilam a “disaster-crisis-affected district,” but locals say there are no signs of any reconstruction work taking place. Citing this, they have announced protest programs, including locking the District Election Office. Accusing the federal government of severely neglecting disaster-affected Ilam under the pretext of the upcoming election scheduled for March 5 (Falgun 21), locals have announced a second phase of protests.

Under the second phase protest program, they have announced plans to hold a city rally and corner meeting in Ilam Bazaar on today (Poush 6); to surround, stage a sit-in, and lock the District Election Office on Poush 7; to declare a boycott of the election until the structures damaged by floods and landslides are reconstructed; and to begin a relay hunger strike on Poush 8.

Prakash Chapagain, a member of the protesting group, complained that Ilam is being directly neglected on the excuse that the country is focused on elections. “When Ilam requires Rs 12 billion for reconstruction, not even one rupee has been allocated, and no plan has arrived so far—what should this be called?” he said. “If the people of Ilam remain silent, the period of the disaster-crisis declaration will simply pass, and Ilam will remain exactly as it is.”

Following the floods and landslides of Asoj 18 and 19, which claimed 39 lives in Ilam and caused physical damage worth billions of rupees, the federal government declared Ilam a ‘disaster-crisis-affected’ district for three months on Bhadra 23. On Asoj 25, even the government’s ‘popular’ minister, Kulman Ghising, visited Ilam and assured reconstruction. However, citing a ‘budget shortage’ and using the upcoming election on Falgun 21 as the reason, reconstruction files sent by Ilam’s sectoral offices to the ministries have been returned. A file sent by the Road Division Office in Ilam was returned when the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport—then headed by Ghising himself—forwarded it to the Ministry of Finance. According to sources, more than ten days have passed since a second file worth Rs 750 million was submitted after an earlier Rs 7 billion proposal was returned, but so far there has been no response from the ministry.

People’s News Monitoring Service.

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