A problem identification and action plan formulation program have been completed in Koshi rural municipality on September 21 under the initiative of ‘Informing the Local Community and Making Responsible Bodies Accountable’ initiated by the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC).
Meetings of members of the human rights group Koshi, people’s representatives and other stakeholders have identified problems related to education, health, food and housing, identified stakeholders and formulated an annual action plan.
The meeting analysed the impact of COVID-19 on the issues of education, health, food and the right to housing. Action plans have been made to interact on the impact of COVID-19 on the education of children, to take initiative for the treatment of the chronically ill and other patients due to COVID, to bring the closed school into operation with health protection, to support agriculture and to provide grants. Stakeholders including Koshi Rural Municipality Chairperson Ayub Ansari, Chief Administrative Officer Khagendra Giri, Ward Chairperson Bindeshwar Yadav, Ram Chandra Mahato, Anim Miya Nepali, Suleman Mansuri, Rajkumar Sah and Kawa Ward Chairperson Dropati Sah and INSEC representative Jaya Krishna Yadav were serious about the problem and resolved it.
Similarly, adolescents and women of Koshi rural municipality have demanded free distribution of sanitary pads through health institutions. Geeta Poudel demanded that sanitary pads should be made available free of cost for women and adolescents. Anita Urawan, the chairperson of the human rights group Koshi, demanded that sanitary pads should be provided free of cost as they are linked to health and contribute to sanitation. He said that there was a need to build free sanitary pads for women and adolescents as well as women-friendly toilets in the bazaars and squares.
Farmer Pawan Rauniyar demanded that the Karokarwalas of Koshi rural municipality should provide easy fertilizer to the farmers. He said that the farmers were facing problems as the lockdown did not provide easy manure to the affected farmers and destroyed the manure brought from across the border.
The locals of Koshi have also demanded that the squatters’ problem should be solved. The participants in the interaction have demanded to solve the housing problem in hundreds of squatter settlements in the Koshi flood-affected area. In order to solve the problem of squatters, they have demanded to give rich people in the place where they have been living, to help in the construction of the two-room building, to help the residents ‘sons and daughters for higher education, to provide employment to one member of the residents’ family.
Jaya Krishna Yadav