One year after Nepal was hit by a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake, there are still millions of people living in temporary shelters and hundreds of thousands of buildings in need of reconstruction.
BBC South Asia correspondent Justin Rowlatt writes that he thought rebuilding would have started in Nepal, "but it is as if the country has been frozen in time." Most structures that were clearly unstable have been brought down and the rubble has been cleared from streets, but "virtually none" of the 800,000 buildings thought to have been destroyed have been rebuilt. In the countryside, it's even worse, with some villages entirely wiped out.
The Red Cross says there are four million people living in shoddy temporary shelters, and while the government promised to pay those who lost loved ones or their homes (people who lost a home were told they would get $2,000) many have not received the money. Beli Bishta, a mother of three whose husband was killed in an aftershock, told Rowlatt her life is worse now than it was right after the quake — she is living with her children in a one-room tin shack built in the wreckage of her old home. "We have lost everything," she told Rowlatt. "No one has helped us. I've had to sell our land. It is the only way we could manage."
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After the quake, $4.1 billion in aid was pledged from countries around the world. Rowlatt spoke with Nepali Prime Minister KP Oli about why that money has not been widely distributed, and Oli blamed it on political upheaval in Nepal and a fight over the country's new constitution. "Of course it is slow," Oli said. "It is late. I am not happy, but it is reality and I have to accept the reality and go ahead."
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