KATHMANDU VALLEY, NEPAL, April 19, 2016 (Nikkei Asian Review): Deftly handling tiny chisels and swabs of cloth, a dozen village women painstakingly chip away the crust and grime of centuries, restoring to life images of Brahma, Vishnu and other Hindu Deities that grace an architectural masterwork.The skilled workers are putting the finishing touches to a shrine at Changu Narayan, a holy site becoming doubly renown: It is Nepal’s oldest Hindu temple and the first of numerous artistic treasures to be resurrected following the April 25, 2015 killer earthquake.
One year later, the temples and palaces at the world’s largest concentration of UNESCO World Heritage Sites remain heaps of rubble. Other structures that had suffered seismic damage were still being propped up by wooden beams, the victims, experts say, of Nepal’s political infighting, bureaucratic lethargy, dearth of resources and possible corruption. This is despite millions of dollars pledged by international donors.
At a magnitude of 7.8, the earthquake decimated or damaged, by the government’s estimate, nearly 3,000 religious and culturally significant sites. UNESCO says it will take some $200 million to restore these monuments. “There was a real rush of goodwill after the quake, together with lots of chaos and duplication,” said Stefaan Poortman, executive director of the U.S.-based Global Heritage Fund who visited Nepal recently. “Then there was a period of emergency conservation. But now we have a bottleneck in the government, with organizations waiting for restoration projects to be approved.”