The exhausted workers of Jaya Mayaswori Brick Factory pack clay and haul loads with a new sense of purpose, helping to rebuild Nepal after a series of massive earthquakes and aftershocks ravaged the Himalayan nation, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
There is urgency to the back-breaking work. Nepal was crippled by last month’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which killed more than 8,000, while a string of strong aftershocks has further terrified survivors.
The capital of Kathmandu is in shambles. Entire villages are flattened into rubble and dust. Many businesses have shut down, leaving survivors scrambling for income.
Photo: EPA
The brick factories clustered in Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, are some of the few businesses still running. For the owners and workers who have not returned to their villages, that means there is still a chance of earning wages and profits.
“I am making my contribution to the rebuilding of our country by making these bricks,” said 17-year-old Barsa Pun Magar, who joined the factory six months ago.
“There has been so much destruction. Every brick is going to help bring the country and people back to their feet,” she said.
Though many factories were damaged, with kilns toppled and housing destroyed, employees work overtime before an anticipated rush for construction materials.
In a few weeks, the monsoon season arrives and is expected to create impassable swamps, trigger landslides and pummel the tarpaulin tents providing shelter to many.
“There is definitely going to be a big demand for bricks in the next few months as people start to rebuild,” factory owner Shree Bhakta Sukhupayo said.
He expects the price of bricks to go up, from a prequake level of about US$0.17 to as much as $0.25, but he insists that he will not profit by raising his prices.
“We have faced a big loss in the earthquake; we are also victims. We hope the government will bring programs that could help businesses like ours,” he said.
Nepal faces billions in reconstruction costs, and has appealed to governments and agencies for help.
Almost 745,600 buildings and homes have been damaged or destroyed, including at least 87,700 in the capital, Nepal’s emergency authority said. Engineers said just 40 percent of Kathmandu’s damaged buildings are habitable.
Brick-making involves packing clay into rectangular lumps, firing them in kilns and hauling them to enormous stacks awaiting transport.
The hours are also long — sometimes 12 hours a day — but the workers, many with family in shattered villages, are also racing against time and weather.
With Nepal’s needs so vast, and its future prospects uncertain, many are doing overtime because it’s the only job they can get.
“I have to work to feed my family,” said Kalu Ram Bika, 37, who sends some of the money he earns to his parents in their village in southern Nepal.
“We work. We get fed. It does not matter how bad the situation is. We have to work,” he said.
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