International News

KATHMANDU, (APP/AFP) – A year after
an earthquake flattened her home in Nepal, Menuka Rokaya still lives in a tent with her husband and nine-month-old baby as they await even a sliver of a $4 billion aid fund.
“We have lived like this with a baby through monsoon and winter,” says Rokaya, one of an estimated four million people who are still homeless.
“The quake spared us, but it is difficult to survive now.
“Earlier, many people used to come here to help us. But… they have all disappeared now,” she told AFP as she nursed her young daughter.
The world rallied to donate money to help the desperately poor Himalayan nation after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck on April 25 last year.
Nearly 9,000 people lost their lives in the disaster while over half a million homes were destroyed.
But while $4 billion in aid has been raised, wrangling between political parties over control of the funds has meant that most victims have received nothing beyond an initial small payout.
Rokaya, who was six months pregnant when the quake brought down her home, now lives with her family in a tent that offers little protection from the cold and the rain.
“We haven’t heard anything about compensation. We don’t have any money, how can we rebuild?,” said Rokaya, who lives in a camp near Kathmandu airport.
The family has to survive on the $10 that her husband earns a day as a tea-seller and meals are cooked on a stove inside their tent. They have to wash in a communal toilet on the camp site.