Karnali, Aug 20

Safe houses are to be built for around 9,000 families in Karnali in the current fiscal year.

The Safe People’s Housing Programme is covering the households under poverty line and those rendered homeless due to natural disasters such as floods and landslides. As part of the programme, Surkhet will have the highest number of 2,643 safe houses while Rukum-West will have 1,199, Salyan 1,691, Dailekh 1,789, Jajarkot 1,015, Dolpa 512 and Jumla 506.

The State government will provide assistance to replace the thatched roofs of the houses with the corrugated zinc sheets. Each house will receive Rs 50,000 for replacing the thatched roof. In this connection, the Federal Urban Project Implementation Unit has finalized the houses to be built in Surkhet Constituency-1.

As many as 1,520 roofs will be replaced with corrugated zinc in the area. The households will get the grant from concerned local level, shared engineer of the project implementation unit Tikaram Pokharel. “There is a plan to place corrugated zinc sheets in the roofs of 9,000 houses in the current fiscal year”, he said, adding, “It is almost finalized in Surkhet and it is yet to be finalized in other districts.

The beneficiary households will be finalized by a meeting of the people’s representatives and parliamentary members from the concerned constituency”.

The poor families are expected to remain safe from recurring incidents of fire in the settlements. –