Lakasa Nepal with financial aid from Mercy Relief Singapore, wants to construct two earthquake damaged schools in Phulpingkot VDC of Sindhupalchowk, Epicenter District. In order to construct those school buildings for Phulpingkot Higher Secondary School (PHSS) and Chiyandanda Primary School (CPS), the School Management Committees (SMC) and community want to produce capable masons within their own communities. To meet this requirement, the Lakasa Nepal, with financial aid from Mercy Relief, Singapore and Technical Assistance from Thapathali Engineering college, conducted a 5 days training for local masons, selected by SMCs, so that the technically capable mason can contribute in the school construction project that is about to start soon. Our team including, Voxel founder, Mr Ujjwal Ghimire and several enginners trained 41 masons in the area.
Devastating earthquake of May 2015 destroyed more than 98% houses in Sindhupalchowk. So one of the project planned is to produce capable local masons who could build the safe school buildings and individual houses in the villages. In the past experiences several destructive earthquakes caused extensive damage to lives and property. Rapid urbanization and unplanned development has led to the situation that millions of people in various parts of the country are at risk from earthquake. For a seismically vulnerable country like Nepal, to mitigate the problems due to pre and post disaster, earthquake resistant construction is now very essential. The Community has accepted the need of trained masons for the safer construction in the area. The training program is a part of comprehensive program of capacity building under the project and will be tailored with technological tool development and building capacity of institutions for taking up the initiative in a sustainable way. Accordingly, with the joint effort the community, the Phulpingkot higher secondary school, Lakasa Nepal and Mercy Relief, the training– “Mason Training for earthquake Resistant Construction” for 41 masons including 5 observers from March 9 – 14, 2016 in Phulpingkot. The principal aim of the training was to create awareness about seismic hazards on structural system among the participants and provide basic knowledge and skill on earthquake safe construction procedure to masons in the area.
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The Program was very successful and was a very fruitful experience for us.