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Kathmandu Sunday April 15, 2001 Baishakh 02, 2058.
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Media coverage of cross border
smuggling irks locals
Post Report
BIRGUNJ, April 14 - People living close to the
Nepal-India open border have been irritated with the media following the deployment of the
Royal Nepal Army to control illegal cross—border trade and smuggling.
Locals also said their survival has been
jeopardised after the RNA started patrolling the major entry points, where people used to
ferry illegal goods to and from Indian markets. They have developed a feeling that the
army was mobilised due to the media coverage on widespread smuggling across the border.
A group of reporters who went to frontier
Chhpakaiya village to cover the arrest of alleged smuggler by the army on Friday were
mistreated by the locals.
They picketed the RNA personnel for a while and
demanded his immediate release. Also, the locals whose main sources of income has been
illegal trades along the border for decades threaten intimidating the media men for being
bias against the locals.
Illegal trade has been, to some extent, controlled
due to the presence of the army men. More than 50 percent of the people near the border
rely on across-the-border illegal trade.
The locals also warned the reporters not to appear
there in the future otherwise they would face dire consequences. Some of the locals
claimed that they have been deprived of two days meal since the deployment of the army on
March 14.
Should the government withdraw the army just for
the sake of their survival at the cost of heavy losses at the national exchequer?
"We are not that much educated to choose other
alternatives," said Inar Ahammed, who has been engaged in illegal trade for the last
20 years, "We are ready to work in factories but employers hire Indian nationals in
their factories."
Nor are they big mafia. They used to be the porters
to the big businessmen for a few hundred rupees for the labour they sold.
Mutarja Ahammed who hails from Birgunj-2 said that
he could not afford to send his children to school as his income has plummeted since the
army mobilisation across the border.
Chief District Officer in Parsa, Dolakh Bahadur
Gurung, however, contradicts with what Mutarja argued. The locals would not care about
their children’s education when they enjoyed high-days in smuggling, CDO Gurung said,
"Rather they will educate their children to face new challenges."
He, however, added that they should be given
training on income generating skills and be given small scaled loans to run some sort of
businesses.
Local industrialists say that more than 10,000
people living close to the Nepal-India border would engage themselves in crimes unless
alternative ways of their survival were found out.
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