KAVRE, Nepal: Survivors of the monsoon floods that ravaged Nepal at the weekend criticised the government on Tuesday (Oct 1) for inadequate relief efforts during a disaster that killed at least 218 people.
Deadly floods and landslides are common across South Asia during the monsoon season from June to September but experts say climate change is making them worse.
Entire neighbourhoods in the capital Kathmandu were inundated at the weekend, along with villages in remote pockets of the Himalayan country that were still awaiting relief efforts.
“There is no road, so no one has come,” Mira KC, who lives in a village in Kavre district to Kathmandu’s east, told AFP.
“Even if they do, those who died are dead already and the damage is done. All they will do is offer condolences, what will they do?”
The floods disproportionately hit Kathmandu’s poorest residents living in haphazard slums along the banks of the Bagmati River and its tributaries, which run through the city.
Slum resident Man Kumar Rana Magar, 49, told AFP that authorities had provided shelter for him and his neighbours at a school after their homes were inundated.
However, he said they had been forced to leave before they were ready to return to their homes when the school reopened for classes.
“We are so close to the seat of the government. If they cannot take care of the poor this close, what will they do about others?” he said.
