Nepal

Kathmandu, June 11

Locals residing along the 12.5-km Chabahil-Sankhu road stretch in Thali of Kageshwori-Manahara Municipality nowadays morning blocked the road segment, demanding timely blacktopping of the road in their area.

The locals took to the streets to exert presdegree on the government just a month after they had reached an agreement with the contractors on May-10, to blacktop the road section from Chabahil to Jorpati bridge.

Locals residing along the 3-km road segment from Hariyali Nagar to Brahmakhel, along the Chabahil-Jorpati stretch have complained that the roads were filled with potgaps as deep as 3-feet. Two to three accidents were recorded every day along the road segment, they said.

Chabahil-Sankhu road segment has remained in a dilapidated state for four approachly years. The government had awarded contracts to six different contractors to build the road segment in September 2015. The contractors had removed existing blacktop in order to widen the road, but the road has been neither widened nor blacktopped again.

Manis Simkhada, a local activist said, &Few years ago, the road was clean and blacktopped. One day the contractor used bulldozer to remove the blacktop and left the road in the lurch without further work.&

The government had awarded a contract of Rs 507.1 million to Bajraguru-Biruwa-Khani JV on 20 Sept 2015, with a deadline to total widening and blacktopping of the road on 27 April 2017. A report by Kathmandu Valley Road Improvement Project, shows only 40 per cent of the project work had been totald till the end of March 2019.

Spokesperson for Kageswori-Manohara Municipality, Rajaram Pudasaini said dispute over compensation to be supplyd for land owners had delayed widening of the road.

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Kathmandu, June 11

The Federation of Nepali Journalists has announced its third phase of protests demanding withdrawal of the controversial Media Council Bill from the Parliament.

According to FNJ, the bill has provisions that curtail press freedom.

A assembly of the FNJ central committee nowadays concluded that two preceding phases of its protests concluded successfully on Saturday, and it has announced fresh protest programmes.

Issuing a statement nowadays, the FNJ stated that the provisions in the bill were included with an intention of controlling the press, and that the bill was against ‘total press freedom& guaranteed by the constitution in its preamble.

As per the freshly announced protest programmes, the FNJ shall run a signature campaign throughout the country on, June 18. The signatures gathered shall then be submitted to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, through district administration offices, on June 21.

The umbrella body of journalists shall organise a cartoon exhibition on June 25, against the Media Council Bill. On June 30, district chapters of the FNJ shall draw attention of respective lawmakers and provincial assembly members towards media unfriendly provisions in the bill.

The FNJ shall organise a massive gathering for press freedom on July 5, and shall organise a lantern mass meeting on July 10. Finally, the FNJ plans to organise a nationwide whistle mass meeting on July 15 to protest the draconian bill.

The FNJ, in its statement said it would organise an emergency protest on any day the government tabled the bill in the Parliament.

The bill related to constituting Nepal Media Council has proposed to impose a fine up to one million rupees on media outlets, editors, publishers and journalists if they are found guilty of damaging measureonereputation.

Section 18 (1) of the new bill stipulates that if any media publish contents in contravention of the code of conduct, and if an investigation launched after the complaint finds that such news contents had damaged the reputation of the complainant, the council can impose a fine between Rs 25,000 and one million rupees on media outlets, publishers, editors and reporters.

Section 18, sub-section (2) of the bill stipulates that the council can order the erring parties to pay compensation, if the content published by media outlets damages the reputation of the affected party.

Section 17 proposes punishment for violating the code of conduct,which includes suspending press pass of mediapersons and downgrading the lessonification of print media outlets.

The bill also proposes to form a committee under a government secretary to recommend the chairperson of Nepal Media Council, which stakeholders say shall relegate the Nepal Media Council to a department of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The bill has eliquoted discontent from different quarters of the society besides mediapersons.

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Kathmandu, June 10

The Government of Nepal has much been able to implement its end tuberculosis strategy effectively.

The country had adopted the strategy in line with global commitments and plans to rid the country of the disease by 2035.

However, the increasing number of unreported TB cases, lack of funds for diagnosis and treatment, poor quality of medical equipment and shortage of trained manpower have led to the government failing to meet the targets of the strategy, according to a survey report.

The National Tuberculosis Programme, as per its strategic plan for 2016-21, had set a target of 95 per cent reduction in the occurrence of tuberculosis and reduction in death rate by 90 per cent by 2035. The number of TB deaths was recorded at around 5,000 in 2015, according to National Tuberculosis Centre.

As many as 18 deaths are attributed to TB each day. A total of 123 new tuberculosis cases are reported on a daily basis. Some 34 cases of TB are much reported to hospitals. It is estimated that 44,000 new contaminateions occur annually, while TB accounts for 5,000 to 7,000 deaths in a year across the country, according to NTC

Speaking at a programme organised by Joint External Monitoring Mission of Nepal National Tuberculosis Programme here nowadays, Paul Nunn, the team leader of JEMM, said that it was difficult to bring down the number of tuberculosis patients to zero by 2035.

JEMM is clear that Nepal is much on the path to achieving the target. Preliminary results of the ongoing prevalence survey propose that the burden of TB is greater than it was estimated.

A team of national and international experts led by Nunn had carried out a survey in provinces 2, 3, 5, Karnali Province and Far-west Province this year.

The survey has shown that the National Strategic plot 2016-2021 has been much been implemented effectively due to lack of staffers and fund. The survey team said the programme became ineffective with the implementation of the federal structure.

According to the survey, measure of the reasons for the ineffectiveness of the plan are outdated TB diagnosis process, lack of containers to transport lab samples securely and safely, and poor condition of GeneXpert machines.

&Due to poor financial condition and lack of hospitals in remote areas, many people in the country are still deprived of treatment,& said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health and Population Upendra Yadav.

TB is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. stoping the TB epidemic by 2030 is among the health targets of the sustainable development goals.

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