(Hanoi = Yonhap News) Correspondent Jinhyeong Park = A month and a half after the massive floods in Nepal, the Nepalese government has drastically shortened the waiting period to declare the missing people, who numbered around 5,000, as dead, and it appears that it will soon be possible to process them as dead.
According to the AFP news agency on the 10th (local time), the day before, Nepalese President Ram Chandra Paudel said, “An enforcement decree for disaster-related laws has been issued.”
The President's Office did not disclose the specific details of the amendment, but in relation to this, the Nepalese government recently announced that it had submitted to President Paudel an amendment to the enforcement decree that would shorten the waiting period for legally declaring death of disaster victims from 12 years to about 45 days.
Those who disappeared due to the massive flood that occurred on August 26th have been missing for 45 days as of today. Therefore, with this revision of the enforcement ordinance, it is expected that the currently 5,285 missing people due to the flood will soon be declared dead.
Currently, the number of deaths due to the flood is at least 1,455, but only 112 of these bodies have been identified and handed over to their families.
In the meantime, families of those missing in the deluge have been experiencing great difficulties in receiving compensation or resolving property-related issues as they have not been able to receive death certificates for their missing family members due to the current law that requires missing persons to be declared dead for 12 years.
The Nepalese government is paying compensation of approximately 200,000 Nepali rupees (approximately KRW 1.74 million) for the first victim in the family to the families of those killed in the flood and 100,000 Nepali rupees (approximately KRW 868,000) for each additional death. Separately, it is providing support for funeral costs of up to 25,000 Nepali rupees (approximately KRW 217,000).
However, the families of the missing have not been able to receive this support as they have not been able to submit death certificates, and it has been difficult to inherit property or transfer title.
Last week, Madan Lal Rawat, a resident of Betrawati district, Bagmati Province, north-central Nepal, went to the local government office to obtain a death certificate for his brother Mangal, who went missing in a major flood, but officials sent him away.
Rawat told the BBC that officials "are still discussing the death certificate issue. I don't know what to do now. There are too many uncertainties."
Previously, on the 5th, Panindra Paudel, head of Nepal's National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC), said that the government had completed search and rescue activities and was "moving to the search and reconstruction phase."
The company-specific search operation to find nine Korean employees, including three from Korea South-East Power and six from Doosan Energy, who went missing from the construction site of the Upper Trishuli (UT)-1 hydroelectric power plant in Rasuwa, Bagmati Province, is expected to be completed by this weekend.
It is said that supply and demand of manpower has become virtually impossible as locals who have been in charge of land searches are returning home after giving up their work during the Dashain holiday, Nepal's largest festival, which begins on the 11th.
Accordingly, it is known that the corporate response team plans to conclude the existing search work as of this weekend, except for excavation work using heavy equipment such as excavators.
