Consolidating dispersed settlements planned

KATHMANDU:

Consider this: Bajura, a remote district in the country’s far western region, has an estimated 24,908 households in 907 settlements.

This means every settlement, on average, comprises only 27 households, or roughly 146 people.

What is more: not every settlement is close by in the mountainous district spread in around 2,188 sq km of land.

Since a small number of households is scattered in a wide area, the government has been finding it difficult to deliver basic public services, like education, health, drinking water, road and electricity, to each and every household in the district.

No wonder, around 51 per cent of the children under five in the district are malnourished, while literacy rate hovers around 55.48 per cent.

It is not that the entire district is lacking basic public utilities and amenities or the government cannot extend those services.

Instead, the issue is about making efficient use of financial resources, because government officials consider it prudent to channel money towards places with higher population density rather than to virtually uninhabited areas, as it would cost the government almost the same amount to build such infrastructure in both types of environment.

But in the name of making efficient use of funds, the state also cannot neglect people living in far flung districts.

To address the problem, the government is mulling over developing limited number of special settlements in districts like Bajura, where basic public services would be fully delivered.

“This, we believe, will help us in consolidating dispersed settlements because people living in far flung areas would be inclined to move towards areas where basic utilities and amenities are easily available,” Joint Secretary of the National Planning Commission (NPC), Gopi Nath Mainali, told The Himalayan Times.

To begin with, the government is mulling over launching a pilot project in Bajura itself, because ‘it is a district with lowest human development index of 0.364’.

A committee, comprising officials of the NPC, the Ministry of Land Reform and Management, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development and the Department of Survey, has already been formed and is working on this plan.

“We are currently collecting data and are planning to visit the district in mid-April. After that we will submit a report to the government recommending measures that can make public delivery system effective in Bajura. The report would also recommend areas suitable for human settlement and farming so that people do not build houses in arable land and vice versa,” said Mainali, who is the member secretary of the committee.

If the pilot project that the government is planning to launch in Bajura turns out to be successful, ‘it will be replicated at other mountainous and hilly regions of the country, so that new towns with effective public service delivery system and land management policy can be created’.

One of the reasons behind underdevelopment of the country is the difficult terrain. This makes it challenging for the government to expand transport network. Because of this, people have to walk for hours to gain access to education and health services. To make matters worse, settlements are dispersed in many mountainous and hilly regions, as a result of which resources get scattered, which do not yield tangible results.

“If we can carve out new towns, we can make optimum use of resources as well,” Mainali said.

For instance, various projects are currently operational in Bajura. “But only limited number of groups is reaping benefits from these programmes because of dispersed settlements,” Mainali added.

The Poverty Alleviation Fund, for one, is operating 60 community organisations in the district, which are offering microcredit and capacity building training programmes.

Similarly, the Ministry of Agricultural Development has allocated a budget of around Rs 70 million for the district in the current financial year, while the Ministry of Education has earmarked a budget of around Rs 44.20 million for the ongoing fiscal.

Also, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Urban Development are operating projects in the district.

“If we can consolidate dispersed settlements, the projects that are currently operating there could cater services to more people at

almost the same cost, which, in turn, can prove to be effective in raising the living standard of people there,” Mainali said.

Source: THT