Incident Reports

57,000 relief blankets from B'desh missing

2015-06-08

Bagmati, Lalitpur, Lalitpur

About 57.000 blankets sent by the Bangladesh government for the relief of earthquake victims in Nepal have mysteriously gone missing. The blankets sent via both land and air routes are not to be seen in the government's records. The Bangladesh government had sent a total 59,272 blankets following the devastating earthquake in Nepal on April 25 and again on May 12. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), which is entrusted with keeping records on relief materials received from various countries, has records of only 2,478 blankets received from the Bangladesh government. MoHA has remained conspicuously silent even as such a large number of blankets from Bangladesh remain missing. According to the Bangladesh embassy in Kathmandu, all 59,272 blankets arrived in Nepal three weeks ago. While some blankets were flown directly to Kathmandu by a Bangladesh Air Force plane, the remaining were sent via land route. "We submitted around 60,000 blankets to the Nepal government three weeks ago," said a source close to the embassy. The blankets were brought to Nepal from Bangladesh through the active initiative of the Bangladesh government, various social organizations and banks. The Nepal Army (NA) had received the blankets sent via the air force plane and submitted them to MoHA. Although NA air-dropped relief materials received from other countries to various earthquake-affected areas, it had submitted all the blankets received from Bangladesh to MoHA. "We have already submitted 25,058 blankets received from Bangladesh to MoHA. NA has not taken even a single blanket from among those received from Bangladesh," said a senior army official. NA said the remaining 34,214 blankets reached Nepal via land route. However, MoHA has maintained that it has received only 2,478 blankets from Bangladesh. Apart from the missing blankets from Bangladesh, blankets sent by various other countries as relief for earthquake victims are also not in MoHA's records. Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bam Dev Gautam has left lawmakers in the dark about the relief assistance received from various countries. During a parliamentary meeting last week, Gautam said the government had received only 183,094 blankets even as MoHA had already received a total of 257,948 blankets from 18 various countries. MoHA records show that Nepal has so far received 18,605 blankets from India, 330 from Pakistan, 2,478 from Bangladesh, 16,456 from China, 19,914 from Thailand, 5,178 from Hong Kong, 3,320 from Singapore, 2,500 from Japan, 2,882 from Algeria and 2,400 from South Korea. Likewise, the MoHA list includes four blankets received from Sri Lanka, 427 from Azerbaijan, 135 from Switzerland, 160 from Bahrain, 140 from Kuwait, 8,790 from Turkmenistan and 135 from Mercy Corps.

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