Categorical Asssurance

PUTTING to rest all speculations that the government was thinking of curbing press freedom, Minister for Information and Communications Ramesh Nath Pandey told newspersons on Monday that there was no such intention whatsoever. Though why and how such rumours were being bandied about are not clear, there has been some speculation in some quarters of the media that the government was mulling such a move. Mr. Pandey's explicit statement that the government would not hurt the press freedom should put an end to such groundless speculation. Adding a personal touch to his statement, he gave out a guarantee that as someone who had suffered imprisonment for three years in the past during his long stint as a journalist, it was unthinkable for him to contemplate such a move. He gave this assurance at a function jointly hosted in his honour at the Media Village by the Department of Information, Press Council Nepal and the Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) on Monday.

He seized the opportunity to also call upon the press to wield their pen keeping the overall national interest in mind, especially at a time when the country was confronted with grave problems. Indeed, the press knows and has been writing about the crisis situation that Nepal is facing for some time. As any other section of society, Nepal's media are also affected by the nation's crisis. But they have a bigger role to play than perhaps many other fields considering their job as a provider of information and shaper of public opinion. One could always debate whether the Nepali media are performing in manner expected of the fourth estate as a watchdog of society, but it is incontestable that Nepali media have bigger tasks than usual in these troubled times to be a mirror on society, provide factual information and non-partisan opinions and views, and do everything else that a vibrant, responsible media are supposed to do anywhere else in the world. Though the tasks before them are challenging, in general, if compared to many other sectors of society, they are not performing too badly. Mr. Pandey's urging to Nepali media to play a positive role in easing the complex situation at present and his unqualified promise not a harm media, must be taken by all media people as an advice to continue to write and speak about the various burning issues freely, fairly and responsibly.

Earthquake & People's Awareness

THE Fourth General Assembly of the Asian Seismological Commission, as well as the Symposium on Seismology, Earthquake Hazard Assessment and Risk Management kicked off in the capital city with a view to, as per a news item carried by this daily the other day, enhance the mitigation capacity of the earthquakes and disasters by, among others, focusing on regional seismological issues, earthquake hazard assessment, impacts of earthquakes on society as well as generating awareness on mitigating hazards of natural disasters among the people of Asia. With Nepal straddling an earthquake fault zone, earthquakes are not unfamiliar natural phenomena for the Nepalese. Nor, for that matter, the natural calamities as well as the hazards that invariably follow in their wake. In fact, it would not be out of context to mention that the Nepalese, since centuries, have always lived with the possibility of earthquakes occurring in their midst. So much so that the people, as and when earthquakes do take place, not only tend to bear with the accompanying disasters and hazards stoically but also try to immediately put the tremors and their concomitant disasters behind them by resorting to ways and means to piece back their shattered lives and habitats together. While this resilience of the people could be due to their pragmatic outlook and behaviour that may have been molded by past experiences of quake-induced disasters and hazards, what simply cannot be overlooked is the fact that with the occurrence of each earthquake, precious lives and invaluable infrastructures are also lost and destroyed.

This is where knowledge, skills and expertise to mitigate the destructive effects of earthquakes on both the people and public infrastructures are most necessary. In this regard, with the exponential proliferation of scientific knowledge and discovery within the last few decades, the scientists and seismologists have not only garnered valuable knowledge concerning earthquakes but also perfected tools, skills to greatly lessen the deadly impacts of tremors on both human lives and necessary infrastructures. While all this is by now well known to all those agencies and concerned authorities charged with minimising the devastating impacts of quakes on the people and various infrastructures, that the need on their part to not only enforce the precautionary measures charted out by them but also raise the people's awareness concerning the same hardly needs any elaboration here. The simple reason being that till date, there is no sure method to predict earthquakes.