Thirty-two-year-old pregnant woman Ganga Maya Tamang of Patybhanjyang Talakhu village, Nuwakot district being taken towards Sundarijal enroute to Kathmandu-hospital for a delivery. She had to be carried for nearly five and half hours due to pregnancy related complication.

UML organises goodwill rally

Post Report

RAUTAHAT, Jan 15 - The Communists Party of Nepal (CPN-UML) organised a "Mechi-Mahakali Goodwill Rally" after series of communal violence in the country, recently.

During the closing ceremony, former minister and standing committee member of CPN (UML), Bharat Mohan Adhikari said that the government has failed to resolve the communal violence which has taken a drastic phase, since days.

He also stated that the prime minster had been spending more time to work for the down fall of his rival Sher Bahadur Deuba and alleged the Prime Minister of being involved in the Lauda Air lease deal.

According to lawmaker Mahendra Rai Yadav, the governance of the country by the congress party has not only failed. He declared that congress leaders are at this time drowned on charges of corruption.

Plight of 98-year-old Thuli

Post Report

HETAUDA, Jan 15 - An 98-year-old woman, living with her drunkard second husband, is frequently subjected to beatings by him.

Resident of Churemai VDC-2, Thuli Maya Aalemagar has wrinkles all over her face. She should be venerated at this age but her husband beat her up again last Monday. Her daughter and son-in-law came to her rescue.

She claims that she has lost all but three of her teeth as a result of beating from her husband. Feeling her way with a stick, she stumbles to her neighbours’ houses for protection at the moment whenever she realizes that her 87-year-old husband has come home drunk.

Thuli Maya,mother of four grown-up sons and daughters and grand-mother of 10 from her first marriage, said that she had twice left for the forest to commit suicide to save herself from the pain of being beaten at this age, but her neighbours stopped her.

She was first married when she was 9 -year-old to an 11-year-old boy and gave birth to her first son at the age of 11. She was widowed when she was 22.

Decades later, at the age of 76, she attended a religious programme. There she met her present husband who said he would not go home without taking her with him, held her hand all through the night and forcibly led her to his home the next morning as his wife, she said.

She said she was saved from lot of beating as her daughter from her first marriage and her son-in-law, who dig and sell sand, also stay in her house and protect her.

She has never had her photograph taken or received citizenship certificates. She and her husband are not aware that they are entitled to an elderly people’s allowance.

Such is the fate of many women living here. Women are generally subjected to family violence, in an area where the majority of residents are from the Tamang community, as a result of men’s drinking habits, said Madhav Khanal, who is involved in activities promoting women’s and children’s welfare.

Of late, women in this VDC are getting themselves together. They have started a campaign to stop men drinking and to compel them to seek forgiveness from women if they beat them.

Community forestry for poverty alleviation

BAGLUNG, Jan 15 (PR) - The Livelihood and Community Forestry Programme (LCFP) is to be implemented in 13 districts of the country for poverty alleviation, with the financial assistance of the British government, according to a report.

With the phasing out of the Nepal-UK Community Forest Project, implemented in seven districts since 1993, the LCFP is being executed with the aim of poverty alleviation, forest officer in Baglung Forest Office, Maheswor Acharya, said.

The British government will provide Rs 2 billion worth to the six-year-long poverty alleviation project, scheduled to commence in February 1, 2001, Acharya said.

According to officer of the Nepal-UK community Forest Project, Ramu Subedi, the new project envisages the establishment of forest-based industries, saving funds among poor women and a reasonable distribution of forest products among the stakeholder. Baglung is the home of the 20,000 hectare Dorpatan Reserve, the only licensed hunting area in the country.

Officer of the LCFP, Nagendra Yadav, said that the programme would be executed by the already-formed 252 forest user groups in the district.

Yadav said that out of the total 45,000 households, 30,000 have been organised into forest user groups. Women’s participation in the management of the community forests stands at 31 percent.

Employees’ absence hits development works

By Kashi Chandra Baral

KALIKOT, Jan 15 - Various government offices in Kalikot district are facing difficulties due to lack of manpower.

Of the total 28 government offices, the second class office chiefs have never been present in the offices (except the District Administration and the District Education Office). Only employees from peon to third class officer level have been working as office chiefs. But they too get off lightly, working for merely 30 to 40 days a year in the district. It has already come to light that Forest Officer, Jay Prasad Gupta, was present in the office for only 33 days in one year.

There has been no Planning Officer in the District Development Committee for the last 13 years, no Revenue Officer for the last 10 years, no engineer in the DDC for the last seven years. Neither has there been a Kavi Raj in the Ayurvedic Hospital for the last three years nor a Local Development Officer for the past one year. The entire offices have come to a standstill since all government office chiefs bar six have been absent for the last five or six months, District Development Committee President, Dip Bahadur Shahi, told The Kathmandu Post.

The government has drawn up major programmes such as Karnali Agriculture Development and Integrated Development Programmes allocating huge amount of funds for the development of the district. However, if the project offices are not manned, the programme goals can never be achieved, said Nepali Congress District Party Secretary Amb Bahadur Shahi.

Kalikot Agriculture Development Office has taken over the responsibility of implementing the Karnali Agriculture Development Office. Its officiating chief, Sher Bahadur Oli, said one of the total nine service centres in the district had remained closed for a long time and only peons were manning the other eight. He further said it was difficult to carry out office works as there were only three technicians in the district.

Similarly, only about half of the employees are found in many offices. Sixteen out of a 35 total employees are present in the Agriculture Development Office, 14 out of 33 in the Drinking water office, 94 out of 154 in the health sector, 24 out of 34 in the forest office, 17 out of 27 in the Livestock Development office and 11 out of 14 in the irrigation office.

As people visiting different government offices find it difficult to speedily carry out their work due to lack of manpower they are dissatisfied, which has helped spread the Maoist insurgency. Therefore, the government must fill up vacancies in all the offices located in the district immediately, DDC President Shahi said.