Nepal red tape causes logjam in aid efforts

More survivors are pulled from rubble in rural district

Nepalese women remove debris searching their belongings from their house that was destroyed a week ago during the earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Sunday, May 3, 2015. The true extent of the damage from the April 25 earthquake is still unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. The U.N. says the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal's 28 million people. (AP Photo/Bernat Amangue)
Nepalese women remove debris searching their belongings from their house that was destroyed a week ago during the earthquake in Bhaktapur, Nepal, Sunday, May 3, 2015. The true extent of the damage from the April 25 earthquake is still unknown as reports keep filtering in from remote areas, some of which remain entirely cut off. The U.N. says the quake affected 8.1 million people — more than a quarter of Nepal's 28 million people. (AP Photo/Bernat Amangue)

KATHMANDU, Nepal -- Relief supplies for earthquake victims have been piling up at the airport and in warehouses in Kathmandu because of bureaucratic interference by Nepalese authorities who insist that standard customs inspections and other procedures be followed, even in an emergency, Western government and aid organization officials said Sunday.

"The bottleneck was the fact that the bureaucratic procedures were just so heavy," Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations resident coordinator, said. "So many layers of government and so many departments involved, so many different line ministries involved. We don't need goods sitting in Kathmandu warehouses. We don't need goods sitting at the airport. We need them up in the affected areas."

The U.S. ambassador to Nepal, Peter Bodde, said he had spoken to Nepal's prime minister, Sushil Koirala, about the issue and "he assured me that all the red tape will be stopped."

Also Sunday, three survivors were pulled from rubble in the Sindhupalchok district, an especially hard-hit and largely rural area north of Kathmandu.

Officials of aid organizations and Western governments have been grumbling about the Nepalese government since the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck the country April 25, killing more than 7,000 people. Early complaints accused the government of all but disappearing, a criticism that even top officials acknowledged was fair.

"Everyone was panicked, everything was closed, and we all tried to save our own lives," Purna Bahadur Khadka, joint general-secretary of the governing Nepali Congress, said at the prime minister's official residence. "And some critics can say there was no proper coordination for the first two days."

But sometime over the past week, the government revived, Khadka said. And that is when, Western aid officials say, government officials began insisting that an entire list of rules must be followed, even for emergency relief supplies.

Bodde said it was a problem that the United States intended to help fix, as a large C-17 transport plane unloaded a UH-17 helicopter and, separately, four Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flew into Nepal on Sunday to help carry supplies from Kathmandu to devastated rural areas.

"That's why we're here today," Bodde said as the C-17 rolled to a stop.

But even that help had been delayed, according to Marine Lt. Col. Edward Powers, the helicopter pilot.

"We've been sitting on a ramp in Okinawa for the last 72 hours" waiting for permission to land at Kathmandu, Powers said at the airport.

The U.S. operation is designed to streamline the delivery of aid at the airport and in more rural areas.

U.S. forces will also take forklifts to more quickly unload and route shipments.

The flights will take off and land from Tribhuwan airport and several smaller airstrips and helicopter landing zones around the country, U.S. Marine Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy, who is commanding the operation, said. U.S. aircraft are not likely to deliver goods directly to towns or villages but instead will ferry them to distribution points where Nepalese authorities and international aid agencies will take charge.

Minendra Rijal, the minister for information and communication and the government's official spokesman, denied that the government had slowed any delivery of aid.

"The accusations are false," Rijal said in a telephone interview. "It would be better if the U.N. involved itself more in its duties rather than engaging in criticizing the government."

Yet McGoldrick said that delays were occurring not only at the Kathmandu airport but at border crossings with India and even at district headquarters across the country, and Nepalese journalists have quoted customs officials at the Indian border crossings as affirming that relief supplies needed to "go through strict inspections."

McGoldrick said that while the government had loosened its requirements in the past day, time was essential.

"Planting season is six weeks away, and if you miss that you'll need to deliver food aid for another three months," he said. "The monsoon is coming in eight weeks. So it's very precarious."

U.N. humanitarian officials also said that they were increasingly worried about the spread of disease.

District officials said in a series of interviews that food and tents had yet to reach some remote villages because of transportation problems, not bureaucracy.

"The food supply is OK in the villages surrounding district headquarters, but we have not yet been able to make any normal supply in remoter parts of the districts," said Basudev Ghimire, the chief district officer of Dhading district.

Anil Kumar Thakur, the chief district officer of Bhaktapur district, said bureaucratic requirements had prevented most distributions of cash under a plan to compensate families who suffered deaths.

"Although we have already started to distribute cash relief, it is not going well," Thakur added. "It requires verification letters from police and other documents that establishes relations with the deceased one."

Airport restrictions

Also Sunday, civil aviation authorities announced that they had closed the Kathmandu airport to the largest jets, or those weighing more than 196 metric tons, for fear they could damage the runways.

The airport's main runway was built to handle only medium-size jetliners, but not the large military and cargo planes that have been flying in aid supplies, food, medicines, and rescue and humanitarian workers, said Birendra Shrestha, the manager of Tribhuwan International Airport, located on the outskirts of Kathmandu.

There have been reports of cracks on the runway and other problems at the only airport capable of handling jetliners.

"We feared that the possible damage of our only international airport would invite further problems in the post-quake scenario, so the landing of heavy planes has now been restricted," Shrestha said.

Shrestha said the government and humanitarian organizations involved in providing relief to earthquake victims are mounting pressure to lift that ban. "But we are not in favor" of doing so, he said, adding that permission for the U.S.' C-17 to land had been arranged previously.

"You've got one runway, and you've got limited handling facilities, and you've got the ongoing commercial flights," McGoldrick, the U.N. coordinator, said. "You put on top of that massive relief items coming in, the search and rescue teams that have clogged up this airport. And I think once they put better systems in place, I think that will get better."

Meanwhile, the death toll climbed to 7,276, including six foreigners and 45 Nepalese found over the weekend on a popular trekking route, said government administrator Gautam Rimal. Nepal's Tourist Police reported that a total of 57 foreigners have been killed in the April 25 quake, and 109 are still missing, including 12 Russians and nine Americans.

Laxi Dhakal, a Home Ministry official, said hopes of finding survivors had faded dramatically. "Unless they were caught in an air pocket, there is not much possibility," he said.

Among the latest fatalities to be counted were 51 people, including six foreigners, whose remains were found in the Langtang Valley in Rasuwa district, nearly 35 miles north of Kathmandu. Most of the victims were Nepalese guides, hotel owners, workers and porters.

The area, with a dozen inns near the trekking trail, was buried by a landslide after the earthquake.

Nepal has been shaken by more than 70 aftershocks since the quake, and its people remain on edge. One brief aftershock Saturday afternoon shook the only paved road in the village of Pauwathok. Residents screamed and began to run, then stopped when the tremor eased.

The small village is in the district of Sindupalchok, where more deaths have been recorded than anywhere else in Nepal -- 2,560, compared with 1,622 in Kathmandu. The U.N. says up to 90 percent of the houses in Sindupalchok have been destroyed.

But eight days after the quake, three survivors were found beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings in the district, officials said Sunday.

An Icelandic Red Cross official said the survivors were found about 12 miles from Chautara in Sindupalchok district, about 40 miles northeast of Kathmandu.

The survivors reportedly were flown to Kathmandu for medical treatment.

Information for this article was contributed by Gardiner Harris and Bhadra Sharma of The New York Times; by Binaj Gurubacharya, Foster Klug and Todd Pitman of The Associated Press; and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 05/04/2015

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