Govt inaction leads to failure in heritage conservation

Post Reporter

KATHMANDU, Aug 18 - Experts of heritage conservation today said the government’s inaction is responsible for not being able to meet the minimum standards of World Heritage Sites in the Kathmandu Valley.

Prof. Sudarshan Raj Tiwari remarked that the government has made such complicated regulations to conserve the monument zones of World Heritage Sites that the initiators themselves could not implement.

As the government failed to control deteriorating monument areas, UNESCO, ICOMOS and the government jointly devised a 55 recommendations in 1997 to work out in the near future.

Nevertheless, only few of them have been implemented in the site, experts said.

It is because of this failure, the World Heritage Committee has threatened Nepal to enlist the Kathmandu Valley in the In-Danger List last year. Nepal is to submit another report to the Committee telling that all the 55 recommendations would be fulfilled by 2002.

"In theory, most of the recommendations were done but only a few things have been changed at the site," Tiwari said.

He said the Department of Archaeology (DOA), the government body to conserve the historical monuments around the country, indicated that it carried out works like making criteria but such things have hardly brought about any visual change in the monument areas.

Keshav Raj Jha,former ambassador to France and permanent representative to UNESCO, said the DOA tends to hide the real things and present fake reports to the international field.

"This act of hiding the truth will push our monuments towards the in-danger list," he said.

He said the government is not serious to follow the 17-point recommendations made by the International Safeguarding Campaign for the Kathmandu Valley in March 2001.

"At least the government should take steps to form a separate Ministry for Culture and Heritage Conservation. The Ministry of Culture has been shifted from one court to another like a football at least for six times in the past 12 years," said Jha.

Establishing a separate Ministry of Culture was one among the 17 recommendations.

In this connection, Mayor of Bhaktapur Prem Suwal said that the Bhaktapur Municipality has been asking the government to declare the old city as a Cultural City for seven years but materialisation of the concept is still far away.

Minister for Envirionment PL Singh inaugurated the programme, organised by the Nepal Heritage Society.

Locals handover 2 Maoists to police

Post Report

BANKE, Aug 18 - Locals of Sanbarsa village the other day handed over two Maoist rebels to the police by foiling their attempted murder of the Gangapur VDC Chairman,
locals said.

Locals said that they arrested the armed rebels when they attempted to loot a gun from the house of the VDC Chairman, Birendra Pal Singh. Earlier, the rebels had also tried to shoot him before the cease-fire was announced by the government on July 23.

The rebels to be handed over to the police after the incident have been identified as the team leader Ishwori Sharma and Om Kumar Chaudhary from Phattepur VDC-8. The arrested rebels have been brought to Nepalgunj for necessary action.

Locals also said that the rebels had been pressing Chairman Singh to resign from his elected post but he was resisting them for a long time. Chairman Singh was out of his house for his son’s treatment when the rebels arrived there.

Flood victims resettled temporarily in forest area

Post Report

NAWALPARASI, Aug 18 - Altogether 160 families who were rendered homeless by the floods of Narayani River about two weeks ago have been temporarily resettled in the forest area lying on the north of Mahendra Highway in Agyauli VDC-9.

The people rendered homeless by the flooded Narayani River at the beginning of this month were temporarily housed at the local school at the initiative of the VDC after the disaster.

However, since the government did not take any initiative to provide shelter to the flood-affected families until now, the VDC office was compelled to resettle them temporarily in that land, the concerned VDC representative said.

As the school which was closed at the time when the homeless people were housed there was scheduled to open from Friday, they were removed from the school and given shelter in the government forest.

The homeless people are now busy constructing their temporary huts in the government forest land close to the highway after they were sent there by the VDC.

It may be recalled that a total of 102 families of Narayani VDC-3 and 4, who were rendered homeless by the flooded Narayani River last year, were temporarily resettled in the forest area of Tamsariya VDC-8. Arrangement has not been made for their permanent resettlement even after one year. Instead, other homeless people are being temporarily resettled by encroaching the government forest land valued at millions of rupees.

Vice-chairman of Narayani VDC Lalu Prasad Pathak said the VDC was compelled to resettle the homeless people there because interest was not shown from any quarter for their rehabilitation.

Lack of latrines turns Dadeldhura filthy

Post Report

DADELDHURA, Aug 18 - Most of the public places in the Amargadhi Municipality, which is also the district headquarters, have been polluted with human excreta due to lack of public and private latrines.

People empty their bowls along the roadsides and bus park areas with no more public toilets available for the visitors. Even the locals use the roadside and public places as open latrines, one of the major reasons of spreading communicable diseases in communities.

A report published by a Non-Governmental Organisation stated that less than 30 per cent of the total households - there are approximately 200 households - in the district headquarters had their own latrines and the rest of the others empty their bowls in the open fields.

Former headmaster of Mahednra Higher Secondary School Tej Bahadur Ayir said that locals were still unaware that they needed latrines for keeping their health good and their locality neat and clean.

The Rishikhola Community Forestry, a hill top situated nearby the local bus park, is the most beautiful location for sight-seeing in the municipality. But a visitor feels sore upon seeing the locals using it as an open field for latrine and dumping site.

The irony is that it is the community forestry that once received the Ganeshman Community Forestry Award for preserving the forest on local initiation.

Ayir said that the place could be converted into a picnic spot or recreation centre provided that the place was kept neat and clean and free from human excreta.

"People have not realised its beauty. One can see a panoramic view of the Himalayas from this hill station," he added.

Some of the NGOs working in this far-western frontier district are of the view that the municipality and neighbouring villages can be the major destinations for travellers, especially the Indians, if people are aware of the importance of their locality.

It is not that nothing has been done to improve the condition of local sanitation. District Coordinator of SIWED, an NGO, Hemba Raj Pant, said that the health awareness campaign launched in the neighbourhood of the district headquarters had brought about positive impact on the people living in the municipality area.

New SLC exams big hurdle for poor students

By Nitya Nanda Timsina

KATHMANDU, Aug 18 -Though the national statistics on SLC results encompassing all the districts are yet to come, the reports received from a couple of districts show a marked disparity in results between the urban and the rural schools, and also between the private and the government schools.

Except Parsa district that recorded a stunning 48.19 per cent result against the national average, a 17 per cent higher than the national average this year, all other districts have appallingly low pass per cent.

The new SLC 2001 hammered hard on the rural masses with very few students passing their exams. When compared to SLC 2000, 14 per cent less students have passed this year with the result that the 14 billion rupees spent by the government on education during the FY 2000-2001 seems to have gone waste.

Thirteen out of 42 schools in Ramechhap, 17 out of 48 schools in Dang, 8 out of 36 in Dolakha, 12 out of 41 in Panchthar, 7 out of 30 in Salyan, 16 in Tanahu, 14 in Banke and 2 in Sunsari recorded zero result this year.

The statistics collected by Institute of Human Rights Communication Nepal show that 150,000 students who failed this year will simply add to an estimated 100,000 school-drop outs currently employed as domestic labours. The number of children deprived of their basic right to education already stands at 38 per cent.

"I don’t believe this system should continue next year," said Ramakanta Sapkota, General Secretary of Nepal National Teachers’ Association (NNTA) protesting against the new examination pattern.

Many schools faced blast threats and then came the bandhs disrupting regular classes reducing the working days to less than 200. Amidst such potentially chaotic situation, authority insisted on changing the curriculum and the exams pattern.

The dismal performance by around 150, 000 students, most of whom failed in mathematics followed by English this year in their SLC, has put school administrators, parents, and the academicians in a very difficult position. "Now every one has to be serious about SLC," said Birendra Bahadur Rajaure, Headmaster of Tika Vidyashram School- one of the few government schools that remained without a mathematics teacher for the full academic year.

"How can you expect better result when you don’t have teachers for over six months?" Rajaure asked. Of the total 16 students who appeared for SLC this year, only ten of them have got through in the examinations.

While some of the private boarding schools have vast stores of learning materials and abundant comfort including flower gardens and swimming pools, there are also schools, as District Education Officer, Nain Singh Dhami terms

"morning schools"-housing large number of impoverished children of the poor living in abject poverty.

"An estimated 70 per cent of children in government schools attend their classes only after washing their master’s dishes," said Bishnu Adhikari, Teacher of Pashupati Mitra Secondary School, Chabahil.

These schools have neither space to play nor flower gardens to soothe their eyes but some stuff is forced into their pia-matter, no matter whether they pass or fail. And, it was the poor kids, many of them domestic helps, who made up the significant percentage of students who failed in the SLC this year.