Nepal bureaucracy blamed for quake aid ‘bottleneck’

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Relief supplies for earthquake victims have been piling up at the airport and in warehouses here because of bureaucratic interference by Nepalese authorities who insist that standard customs inspections and other procedures be followed, even in an emergency, Western government and aid organization officials said Sunday.

“The bottleneck was the fact that the bureaucratic procedures were just so heavy,” Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. resident coordinator, said in an interview. “So many layers of government and so many departments involved, so many different line ministries involved. We don’t need goods sitting in Kathmandu warehouses. We don’t need goods sitting at the airport. We need them up in the affected areas.”

The U.S. ambassador to Nepal, Peter W. Bodde, said he had spoken to Nepal’s prime minister, Sushil Koirala, about the issue and “he assured me that all the red tape will be stopped.”

Officials of aid organizations and Western governments have been grumbling about the Nepalese government since the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the country April 25, killing more than 7,000 people. Early complaints accused the government of all but disappearing, a criticism that even top officials here acknowledged was fair.

But sometime over the past week, the government revived, Mr. Khadka said. And that is when, Western aid officials say, government officials began insisting that an entire list of rules must be followed, even for emergency relief supplies.

Mr. Bodde said it was a problem that the United States intended to help fix, as a huge C-17 transport plane unloaded a UH-17 helicopter and, separately, four Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft flew into Nepal on Sunday to help carry supplies from Kathmandu to devastated rural areas. But even that help had been delayed, according to Marine Lt. Col. Edward Powers, the helicopter pilot.

“We’ve been sitting on a ramp in [Okinawa, Japan] for the last 72 hours” waiting for permission to land at Kathmandu, Col. Powers said at the airport.

Mr. McGoldrick said that delays were occurring not only at the Kathmandu airport but at border crossings with India and even at district headquarters across the country. While the government had loosened its requirements in the past day, time was essential, he added.

District officials said in a series of interviews that food and tents had yet to reach some remote villages because of transportation problems, not bureaucracy.