School enrollment drive begins today

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Public schools across the country are all set to start a two-week-long campaign to bring children to school from tomorrow.

The drive aims to admit 6.7 million students in schools in the upcoming academic session. “The government has decided to run the campaign to provide primary education to around 40,000 children between the age of five and 12 years of age,” said Mahashram Sharma, director general at the Department of Education.

As part of the campaign, various awareness programmes such as street plays and mass meetings will be conducted till April 26 and a door-to-door campaign will be organised from April 27.

In addition to this, the government is also going to launch a special campaign in 35 districts to boost enrollment of children from various 22 marginalised communities such as Satar, Chepang, Majhi, Bote, Danuwar, Dhami, Thami, and others in districts such as Bara, Bardiya, Dang, Dhanusha, Gorkha, Humla, Jhapa, Kathmandu, Kanchanpur, Manang, Mustang, Tanahun and Kapilvastu.

The government has also decided to build 6,000 new classrooms, 3,000 toilets for girls and 480 new schools this academic year. The Department of Education said the government has already released Rs 25,000 to each district to run the campaign.

Official records show that 95.1 per cent of children of school going age go to school. However, checking drop-out rates has been a challenge for policy makers. Nearly 30 per cent of students enrolled in grade one never completed the grade and 80 per cent of them do not reach grade ten.

Journalists receive death threats

Himalayan News Service

Pokhara, April 14

UCPN-M affiliated labour union cadre Gundaraj Shrestha alias ‘Min’ has threatened to kill publisher and editor Rajendra Adhikari and photo journalist Banduram Parajuli of the Don news daily published from Pokhara.

It has been learnt that Shrestha called up the newspaper office on Friday and threatened to kill the two journalists if they do not stop carrying news against the transportation syndicate.

Meanwhile, Federation of Nepalese Journalists Kaski chapter on Saturday has expressed concern over the death threat. “We strongly condemn such threats issued just over a news report,” read the statement issued by the FNJ chapter chairperson Badribinod Pratik.

The statement has further sought action on Shrestha and sought security to the concerned journalists.