Sunday 6th October 2024
Reinstating the hope of quality education for scores of children in Nepal, the Central Project implementation Unit (CPIU) reported that 4,476 earthquake-damaged schools have been brought back to normal.
CPIU stated that out of these reconstructed schools, 3,583 were rebuilt by school management committees, 135 by construction entrepreneurs and 758 by non-governmental organizations.
As per the Education Journalists Network Nepal (EJON) Chief I M Narayan Shrestha, the aforementioned entities will be constructing another 1,222 schools, while another 212 schools will be reconstructed by NGOs.
Furthermore, Shrestha informed that a total of 6,646 schools are under construction.
However, even four years after the biggest natural calamity occurred, the Nepal Government still has to provide the necessary budget for the reconstruction of these school buildings.
According to Shreshtha, there is still a gap of NPR 27 billion for reconstruction activity, which is over 22 percent of the total budget required.
“We are expecting the government to release the needed fund from the national budget,” Shrestha told media on April 22, 2019.
The CPIU implementation unit has requested the Ministry of Finance to release NPR 11 billion in the upcoming fiscal, NPR 9 billion in FY 2020-21 and the final installment of NPR 7 billion in FY 2021-22 towards reconstruction.
Even though the government had pledged the reconstruction of damaged schools by FY 2019-20, the implementation unit says it will take another two years.
During the 2015 earthquake, as many as 7,923 schools were damaged across 32 districts.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), Japan International Cooperation Agency and countries such as China and India have been working towards reconstruction of schools in Nepal.
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