Beijing: About 200 Chinese workers are still stranded at a hydropower project site being built with China's help in central Nepal, eight days after a massive earthquake struck the country.
The workers are stuck but safe at the Upper Tamakoshi hydropower project in Lamabagar Area in Dolakha district, where reports suggest that more than 90 per cent of houses in rural areas have been destroyed.
The quake, Nepal's worst in over eight decades, has claimed the lives of more than 7,000 people, while the number of those injured has reached 14,227.
The stranded workers are from China's Sinohydro Corporation Limited, the contractor of civil construction work for the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Company Limited in charge of the project, Nepal officials said.
A worker from the Chinese firm told state-run Xinhua news agency today that a total of 194 Chinese workers are still trapped there, while 35 others had been evacuated and another five had been airlifted by the Nepal Army.
China has been evacuating more than 8,000 of its tourists and workers from Nepal by civilian airlines since the quake struck the Himalayan country on April 25.
Meanwhile, Peng Wei, economic councilor of the Chinese Embassy in Nepal, told the news agency that more than 100 Chinese workers are trapped at the construction site and they are all safe.
Secretary of the Nepal Government Gajendra Thakur, who is involved with the rescue and relief operations in Dolakha district, said efforts are underway to airlift the Chinese workers to Kathmandu.
Ganesh Neupane, chief of the environment division of the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Company Limited, said the Chinese technicians and engineers as well as 70 Nepalese workers are stranded in the powerhouse station at the hydropower project site after a massive landslide caused by the 7.9-magnitude earthquake blocked the 11-kilometer-long Lamabagar-Gongar stretch of the road connecting the region.
