Solid waste composting plants yet to be materialised

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BHAKTAPUR, Sept 27 - None of the 17 solid waste composting plants, as was planned by the Bhaktapur Municipality (BM) a year ago, could be constructed in that period, local representatives said.

"The municipality passed in the last City Council meeting that there would be one composting plant in each of the 17 wards to manage solid waste at local levels in one year but that never materialised," said a ward member, asking for anonymity. "It was due to the lack of commitment among the local representatives."

BM is holding its new City Council meeting on Friday.

The City Council meeting of the municipality allocated budget to acquire land for solid waste recycling and composting plants in the city area a year ago. It was stated that BM would carry on the programmes to recycle solid waste of a ward in the same area.

The member claimed that the central decision-making body showed little interest to acquire land and work as per the annual meeting.

"For the whole year, the members either discussed unnecessary points or remained just silent on vital issues like this," he said.

Chairman of Ward No 10 Aash Kumar Koju said that he did not help construct composting plant in his area because he "did not have the land to erect the plant".

Dhruba Narayan Libi, the chairman of Ward No 11 said, "We suggested to allocate at least 50 to 60 million rupees to acquire land and make a composting plant for the whole municipality because composting garbage at a small scale would cost a lot but the return would not be profitable."

"However, the central body neither listened to our suggestion nor did what they promised," he said.

Among the 17 wards, Ward No 1 provided a small piece of land near Brahmahyani temple for composting purposes and started collecting garbage from the ward residents. But it stopped collecting the garbage even before it launched a systematic production of manure as it lacked necessary infrastructure to run a composting plant.

Dilip Kumar Suwal, the chief of Sanitation Section at BM said, "The plan of establishing plants in all wards could not make progress as the ward chairmen failed to locate the land for acquisition."

Presently, BM recycles around 30 to 40 percent of the garbage in its only one composting plant at Bhelukhel of Ward No. 11. As the plant is not sufficient to manage the ever growing bulk of solid waste, the municipality takes the remaining solid waste of the city for land filling along dry river banks.

However, the section could not figure out the total amount of garbage the municipality residents produce in a year.

The representatives hope to raise the same issue in the next City Council meeting but they doubt that the ward chairmen would show interest to take steps in the vital issue.

Govt warned not to allow US army in Nepal

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KATHMANDU, Sept 27 – Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) Thursday warned the government not to let American army stay in Nepalese land while carrying out probable attacks against Afghanistan.

CPN (Unity Centre), by issuing a press release here said, "We want to give strong warnings to the government not to let any US troop stay in the Nepalese land. We don’t want anybody use our land for imperialist purpose."

The party made the warning in the light of the government’s support to the US troops during the probable US attacks against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to hunt down the prime suspect of terror attacks in the US on September 11.

The release also condemned the government decision to allow American fighter planes use Nepal’s airspace and also allowing them to refuel. "We urge the government to immediately roll back the decision," the release states.

"The US imperialist foreign policy has been the major source of terrorism in the world," states the release. "The US can never combat terrorism in the world unless it continues this policy."

If the government heeds to its earlier decision and again allows the US troops stay in Nepal, both the things will be against Nepal’s non-alignment policy.

Meanwhile, the United People’s Front - Nepal (UPF-N) today submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, demanding to roll back the government decision to allow US fighter planes fly over Nepal’s airspace and provide refueling facility to them.

According to a copy of the memorandum issued here by the UPF-N, if the government sticks to its plan, it will directly violate Nepal’s non-alignment policy as stated in the Constitution.

"We strongly urge the government to immediately roll back its decision or face probable bloodshed in Nepali land," says the memorandum.

People look on as a girl makes suicide attempt

By Kiran Chapagain

KATHMANDU, Sept 27 – Hundreds of people around Ranipokhari were surprised and dazed when they got a rare chance on Thursday to witness a teenage girl’s suicide attempt.

Despite a stiff cordon around the pond in downtown Kathmandu, 16-year-old Prabha Khatri (name changed) jumped from the bridge, only to be rescued by the guards there.

The girl underwent a suicidal bid from the bridge, near the Mahadev temple in the middle of Ranipokhari (The Queen’s Pond), evading the sight of the officials and guards assigned to take care of this historical landmark of the capital.

According to her version given to the Durbarmarg Police Station, she slipped into the steel–barred Ranipokhari from the northern side of the pond in Jamal and approached to the gate of the bridge that leads to the famous temple of Mahadev. She finally set her self-deceptive steps on the path towards the temple for final prayers where she prayed three times. She ultimately jumped into the 32 feet deep pond.

Two of the guards had actually seen her but could not stop her. "We saw her when she was about to jump," said Hari Bahadur Waiba, a guard at the pond who rescued the girl by throwing a rope and pulling her out.

Soon after her arrest, the girl clad in a brown kurta salwar told The Kathmandu Post that she was actually angry with her mother. But she cooled down after taking a dip and accepted the rescue offer. "I later realised that I was taking a wrong step," the girl said. "That is why I accepted the rescue rope thrown by the guard."

She even joked with this reporter saying that she knew how to swim. "I have taken a month-long swimming course in India," she said.

Though she hails from Bhaktapur, she told the police that she has been living at Ganeshsthan with her mother and father, who is an army man.

Timely action to mitigate arsenic problem stressed

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KATHMANDU, Sept 27 - Until a few years ago arsenic, a natural element found in the rocks and soils, was not a prominent issue in Nepal although it had already affected the health of a large number of population in Bangladesh and West Bengal through the drinking of contaminated ground water which was thought to be the safest form of water in the world.

But the situation has changed after the year 1999 as the element was detected since then in the groundwaters of Nepal, especially in the Terai belt and the Kathmandu Valley and the rising number of diarrohea case associated with this element.

Various bureaucrats from different departments of the government speaking at a seminar organised jointly by the Society of Environmental Journalist (SEJ), Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MPPW), and Department of Water Supply and Sanitation (DWSS), today urged for collaborative action between the organisations to seek a remedy for this recently emerged problem before it becomes a havoc-like in the neighbouring countries.

" More than 40 per cent of the population in Bangladesh have high concentration of arsenic in their bodies and we have to be aware as nature has no boundaries", said Dr. B.D. Chataut, Director General of Department of Health Services.

According to Janak Raj Pathak, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Population and Environment, the problem of arsenic is growing in the Terai region and a timely action is necessary to get rid of the problem.

"A standard for quality of drinking water should be set to mitigate the problem of arsenic", said Dinesh Chandra Pyakurel, Secretary at MPPW.

Technical experts from WHO and UNICEF emphasised the need to carry out the chemical analysis of tubewells across the country to check the possible concentration of arsenic, set standard for drinking water and adopt precautionary measures before the problem intensifies.

As the government has recognised the problem, it has formed National Arsenic Steering Committeee under the DWSS that has been in action since the last 18 months.

It is estimated that each of the Terai district has 10,000 shallow tubewells and there are around 200,000 tubewells in the country providing safe drinking water for about 9.7 million people.

The objective of this seminar is to recognise the problem, adopt guidelines and put them into actions to find a suitable solution, said Upendra Karki of SEJ.

DEO to scrutinize teachers’ certificates in Dang, Jumla

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LAMAHI (Dang), Sept 27 - Some of the teachers in public schools have already tendered their resignations after the District Education Office (DEO) in Dang and Jumla began scrutinizing their academic certificates, according to sources from the respective districts.

An investigation committee has been formed under the chairmanship of the chief district officer to scrutinize the academic certificates of the teachers engaged in public school.

The DEO source said that four of them have already submitted their resignations while around 200 others are going to quit their jobs ahead of the investigation.

The DEO, as per the instruction from the central level, has issued a circular to all 1,700 teachers in the district to submit their original certibicate at the office by end of the second week of October. This move was taken after a report was made public about the widespread use of fake certificates in government jobs, especially in teaching, corporations and army sectors.

Officer at the DEO Nima Nanda Bhusal said that there would be around 200 teachers who might have acquired the job by presenting fake academic certificates in the district. He also said that around four dozen teachers were preparing for submitting their resignations when the DEO announced to scrutinize their certificates. A preliminary investigation carried out by the investigation committee revealed that most of the teachers, who were made permanent automatically after completing a period of one year in teaching profession, were found to have possessed such fake certificates.

The teachers said that there was a panicky among the teachers themselves after this announcement was made. If a person is found guilt of holding a government job based on a fake certificate, s/he is imprisoned for six years or fined the amount equivalent to that of the period of the job s/he was in.

Some of the higher secondary schools have been closed for over a week as most of the teachers left their schools for their home to collect their original certificates. There are three higher secondary schools in the district.

Meanwhile. our reporter from Jumla said that a committee has been formed to scrutinize certificates of all the teachers in this mountain district. The investigation committee has noticed the teachers engaged in all the 300 public schools in the district to submit their original certificates by the end of October. A DEO source claimed that dozens of positions would remained vacant following the completion of the investigation.

The DEO source said that many people got jobs in public schools by using fake certificates bought from inauthentic Indian institutions.

15 pc school children suffer from eye diseases

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MAHOTTARI , Sept 27 - It has been found that 15 percent of the children in school suffer from eye diseases.

This came to light when the eyes of 6 to 15 year old boys of secondary schools were checked under the school visit programme organised by Nepal Red Cross Society Primary Eye Care Centre, Jaleswor recently.

A total of 20 secondary schools were included under the school visit programme. Eyes of a total of 1,000 boys studying in 8 schools have already been examined. Of them, 150 students have been found suffering from various eye diseases.

According to Eye Assistant Ramesh Bhattarai, 35 were squint eyed. They may lose sight of one of the eyes as a result of this disease. As they did not come for treatment on time, treatment of their eyes is not possible, Bhattarai said.

More than 5,000 children (3 and a half percent ) of the district’s total 24,000 eye patients from among the 160 thousand children of the district may suffer from this disease which is known as ‘imloapia’ in medical terminology.

This statistics is of grave concern, Bhattarai said and added that guardians should be alert in checking this disease. They must have the eyes of their children checked every year.

The Primary Eye Care Centre established in 2056 BS in Nepal Red Cross Society Mahottari, Jaleswor, has been currently running eye clinic daily. It has been running other eye-related programmes as well. Financed by Swiss Red Cross, the centre has found four types of curable diseases among the students during the school visit programme.

Coordinator of the managing committee of Nepal Red Cross Society Primary Eye Care Centre, Dipak Mishra, said since students were not able to learn without their eyes, the centre plans to expand the school visit programme to cover all students of all the econdary schools of the district.

There are in all 41 secodary schools in the district.

Two daily flights to and from Bhadrapur Airport reduced

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BHADRAPUR, Sept 27 - Two daily flights to and from Bhadrapur Airport have been reduced due to lack of passengers. From now on, there will be only two flights a day.

There were up to six flights a day to and from this airport. There is a good airport at Bhadrapur which enables Avro aircrafts to land and take off easily.

It is convenient for people of the frontier area including Darjeeling, Kurseong, Siliguri, Kalimpong and Sikkim in India to fly to Kathmandu and this was the reason why up to six daily flights were possible in the past.

However, as a result of the increasing activities of Maoist workers and the consequent lack of law and order, insecurity and terror and also decline in economic activities in the country, the number of tourists has been declining gradually in recent times.

According to an employee working at Bhadrapur Airport, Gopal Ghimire, the number flights has been reduced because of the fewer number of passengers. RNAC had stopped its flight to and from Bhadrapur Airport about 10 months ago and other private airlines are also gradually reducing the number of their flights since then.

Sujata Ranjitkar of Shrinkhala Travels at Chandragadi says they were selling 15 to 20 tickets daily in the past. She, however, says they find it difficult even to pay the rent of the office rooms and salary of the employees due to the decline in the volume of their business these days.

Similarly bleak is the financial situation of other travel agencies operating in the district, such as Animish Travels or Nepal Travels of Kakarbhitta.

At one time people had to buy tickets three days in advance even when there were six flights daily, but now there are only two flights and people can easily get the ticket at the airport the same day before they board the plane.

The tourist season has started and even the great festivals of Dashain and Tihar are approaching, but there is no hope of any achievement this year, Tara Banstola, proprietor of Hotel Krishna said. "Increasing violence and worsening law and order situation have absolutely damaged all the sectors." Moreover, the decline in the number of tourists entering Nepal from Kakarbhitta entry point has further affected the flights.

NECON, Buddha, Mountain and Shangrila Airlines had all been operating one flight daily to Bhadrapur, but only NECON and Buddha Air have continued their flights. Other airlines operate their flights to Bhadrapur only if they have charter flights or plenty of passengers.

The decline in the number of flights has adversely affected the economic activities, trade and commerce in this area.