By Our Reporter
A massive landslide hit Lidi of Jugal Rural Municipality in Sindhupalchowk district killing at least 30 people and burying a dozen others on Friday morning.
The whereabouts of several missing people have still been unknown and rescue teams of Nepal Army and Police have been searching for the bodies in the debris.
While the news about the landslides arrived in Kathmandu, leaders were in a race to reach Lidi taking helicopters.
Speaker Agni Sapkota, who is elected from the district, was first to reach the site followed by Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal on the same say and Chief Minister Dormani Paudel next day.
It seemed the leaders competed to take helicopters to the landslide site rather than providing relief to the people. Of course, it was a shame on the part of the government because the government was responsible for the tragedies as it gave deaf ears to the appeal of the locals as well as the geologists to shift the settlement from Lidi after the 2015 earthquake which weakened the soil there.
The earthquake of April 25, 2015, had cracked the ground and weakened the landmass in Lidi, Jugal Gaunpalika–2, so much so that the entire area had become unsafe to live in. More than 500 households of Lidi, Lamatole, Nampha, Sanchagaun, Jhulke, Nimlung, and Baigadtole lived under high risk of landslide and they had repeatedly made the local as well as the federal government aware of the dangers they were facing and had asked for their settlements to be relocated.
But the authorities ignored the locals’ pleas and as a result, a massive landslide hit Lidi village at 6.30 on Friday morning, sweeping away 38 houses and killing as many as 30 people.
Lidi had been declared unsafe by the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) five years ago and had forwarded its recommendations to the government. A budget of Rs. 400 million had even been allocated for the relocation or bioengineering reconstruction of the place, along with 16 other earthquake-damaged settlements. But the budget never reached the village and the landslide has now buried it.
Friday’s landslide was not the first landslide that hit Lidi this year. On July 10, two houses were damaged when the land above the village gave way and slid down. Then too, the villagers had gone to meet the Chief District Officer (CDO) and make him aware and request him to have the village moved to a safer place.
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