Street children in misery

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BUTWAL, Nov 20 - The street children of Rupandehi district are living in a miserable state.

Speaking at a special programme organised here by a local organisation named Bal Samparka Kendra (Child Contact Centre), to mark the International Child Rights Day, District Child Welfare Officer and Assistant Chief District Officer Ganga Bahadur KC highlighted the appaling situation of the local street children in the urban area and urged them to turn their attentions to resolving the problems.

He also regretted that the declarations embedded in the child rights-related documents were not implemented.

Assistant DEO, Ram Krishna Bhattarai, underlined the need to create awareness in society about the condition of the street children who are being exploited and deprived of basic facilities.

Other speakers also highlighted the miserable plight of the street children and sweets were distributed among the children.

The centre has been conducting various activities aimed at improving conditions for local street children in Butwal over the last four years.

Locals demand bank to return valuables

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PARBAT, Nov 20 - Elected representatives and locals from seven VDCs on Monday handed over a memorandum to the authorities of a branch office of the state-owned Rastriya Banijya Bank, demanding the return of their valuables (gold and silver) within a week.

Underground Maoist rebels looted Rs three million cash, gold and silver equivalent to Rs 3.5 million from the Phalebas-based branch office of the bank on January 3, last year. Now the branch office has been transferred to Kushma, the district headquarters, for security reasons.

A delegation of locals warned the bank’s authorities of disturbances to its daily transactions if it refrained from returning the deposited valuables upon payment of the bank’s debts with interest up to the period of the first week of January, 1999.

The memorandum handed to the bank accused the authorities of initiating new transactions of gold and silver without returning the valuables to the bank’s old clients.

Bank manager, Achyut Kumar Aryal, said that he has been waiting for instructions from the bank’s central office ever since the robbery incident. Aryal said the bank had suffered from the robbery and also was facing difficulty in collecting the debts disbursed among the people living in the Phalebas area.

Vaccines returned due  to lack of kerosene

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DOLPA, Nov 20 - The District Health Office in Dolpa on Sunday returned nine hundred vials of vaccines to the Mid-Western Regional Office in Nepalgunj, stating that the vaccines could not be kept cool as the kerosene-fed freezers were running out of power.

Vaccine Supervisor, Govindaman Shrestha, said the vaccines for BCG, TT, DPT, measles and polio which were received from the Regional Health Directorate and already in deposit of the District Health Office, were sent back to Nepalgunj due to a three-week shortage of kerosene.

Shrestha said the special polio-vaccine programme announced by the government for November 18 was hampered due to the kerosene shortage. One litre of kerosene is being sold here for Rs 170. He said his office was lacking in enough fossil fuel even to boil syringes to sterilise them.

The specially-designed kerosene-fed freezers, donated by UNICEF, keep vaccines cool in areas where electricity is not available.

Soon after the kerosene shortage set in,this remote hill district, Supervisor Shrestha requested the Regional Health Directorate to arrange kerosene for the freezers.

The nine hundred vials of vaccines could have fed the district’s demands for three months.

Japanese secy inspects project

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KATHMANDU, Nov 20 - Activities being carried out by the Disaster Mitigation Support Project (DMSP) at Dahachok VDC was observed by the visiting State Secretary for Construction, Japan, Kohei Tamura, today.

State Secretary Tamura, arrived in Nepal yesterday on a six-day official visit to the kingdom. He paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Koirala this afternoon. During his meeting, he mentioned that this was his third visit to Nepal and requested HMG "to extend all necessary support to JICA experts, JOVC volunteers and other project workers.

He also paid a courtesy call on Ram Bahadur Gurung, Minister of State for Water Resources and Devendra Prasad Rimal, Acting Secretary of Ministry of Physical Planning and Works .

During his stay in Nepal, he will participate at a seminar on Community Disaster Mitigation to be held on November 21. He will also visit Pokhara and Lumbini.