KATHMANDU: Janajati and indigenous nationalities today urged the government to address their concern in the new statute that is the making. They also demanded that all discriminatory provisions that have an adverse impact on Janjati and indigenous people be scrapped immediately.

Dr Om Gurung, former general secretary of Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) accused that the state had been discriminating the Janajatis and indigenous groups for the last 240 years.

Addressing a press meet organised in the capital by a group of organisations working for the welfare of Janajati, he said that the indigenous people should be given their rights as stipulated by the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Convention 169.

The rights enshrined in the Convention include right to land ownership, access to water and use of natural resources.

However, Gurung flayed the government for not working in line with the international convention. "Though Nepal has signed the convention on August 22, 2007, there is no such provision for the Janjati and indigenous," he informed.