Pressurise Thimpu

THAT the Bhutanese government is dragging its feet with no sign of relenting to solve the long-festering refugee imbroglio is quite clear to all. The dithering Thimpu has engaged in even to fix a date for the 12th round of joint ministerial-level talks following the verification or refugees in Khudunabari camp by a joint Nepal-Bhutan team six months ago smacks of its unsupportive attitude to the whole process of repatriating the refugees who have already spent almost a dozen years away from home. There was some ray of hope that the start of the verification process may lead to some progress in the resolution of the refugee problem, though the process was painfully slow, prompting fears that it could be years before all the refugees were verified. All the same, there was some amount of relief that finally the process had started after years of foot-dragging by the Dragon Kingdom. But the latest refusal by Thimpu to even confirm dates for the next round of ministerial talks that were to declare the verification results from the Khudunabari camp has put a damper to any optimism that Bhutan may have been any sincere to resolve the issue. Added to that was its rebuff last month to UNHCR’s request to allow it to open its office in Bhutan to facilitate the refugees’ repatriation. All indications, thus, point to Thimpu not mending its ways.

Against this backdrop, it is welcome that six European Union heads of missions are going to the refugee camps in eastern Nepal today (Wednesday) to assess the 12-year-old humanitarian crisis visited upon Nepal by Thimpu’s ethnic-cleansing policy under which it evicted its Nepali-speaking citizens from southern Bhutan. As EU member states have been supporting the upkeep or refugees, they have a legitimate concern over the non-progress of the refugees’ verification process. The European parliament in 1996 itself had expressed its concern on the plight of refugees. The EU heads of mission’ plan to meet refugees and organisations working for their welfare, therefore, comes as an expression of their unease at the go-slow approach adopted by Thimpu. Bhutanese refugees, for their part, would certainly hope that the EU heads of missions, after seeing how Bhutan continues to deliberately dilly-dally, would take serious steps that would put some international pressure on the Thimpu regime to soften its intransigent posture towards the refugee issue.

Preventing Landslides

THE movement of vehicles along a one-kilometre stretch of the Arniko Highway, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, is being hampered due to landslides triggered at the Hindi, Daklang Phulpikattia and Gati VDCs, three of the many village development committees being serviced by the same highway, by this year’s torrential monsoon rains. The monsoon season, for a topographically challenged agrarian nation like Nepal, is both a boon and a curse. A boon in that the monsoon rains greatly facilitate the millions of small farmers to plant their major crops like paddy and millet. On the flip side, the monsoon rains are also notoriously known for triggering landslips in the mountains, hills and valleys. And worse still, along trails and highways that assist in the smooth flow of people and goods from one place to another. Concerning monsoon-induced landslides, with the nation and the people yet to experience the full onslaught of the yearly monsoon rains, we could be hearing of more such news in the days to come. And, with them, reports of impediment in the movement of people and goods from one area to another area. As and when such obstacles do occur, the nation is bound to be the ultimate loser. For, landslips, tend to bring about unwanted breaks in the efforts of the various agencies charged with carrying out and expediting development works in the far-flung areas of the nation.

Undoubtedly, preventing landslips along the major highways is a challenging proposition for a mountainous nation like Nepal. But this does not absolve the concerned authorities from not exploring all available avenues to come up with measures to prevent landslips along the major highways. Regarding such steps, the concerned authorities, with the valuable experiences they have had garnered from constructing highways, should have fine-tuned them by now. The more so when it has become mandatory on the part of all to carry out an exhaustive environment-impact assessment before launching any major road construction project. Conceded, some highways were built long before such a stipulate became mandatory. But then, what about the landslips still taking place along highways built after the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) rocedure came into effect? Hence, if the nation’s development endeavours are not to be stalled by landslips, the concerned authorities need to scrupulously implement the findings of all such environment-impact assessment studies.