KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 11

The Ministry of Women, Children, and Senior Citizens has invited applications from eligible non-governmental organisations to receive grants for construction and operation of senior citizens' meeting centre.

According to the notice published on it website, the MoWCSC said the applications along with required documents should be submitted to the ministry before October-end. The MoWCSC said the NGOs would be selected on the basis of provisions mentioned in the Senior Citizens' Meeting Centre Grant Procedure, 2022.

The senior citizens' meeting centres will be utilised for inter-generational transfer of knowledge, skills and experience gained by senior citizens in their lifetime. As per the MoWCSC, the location of the centres should be accessible to vehicles, ambulances and fire brigade services, along with electricity, water supply, and telephone. Similarly, hospital or health facility and holy sites such as temples and rivers should be in the periphery of five kilometres, as far as possible. The centre must have literary and religious books and good arrangement for singing devotional songs and playing musical instruments.

Further, the centres should also be equipped with furniture, carpet, television, heater, fan and indoor games, besides providing mid-day meal, safe drinking water, emergency health care service and medicines. The administrative expenses should not exceed 15 per cent of the total grants provided by the MoWCSC. The procedure says that the government has a provision of funding NGOs established and operated to assist and utilise knowledge, skills, capacity and experience of senior citizens. Grant will be provided to qualified applicants following necessary inquiry and examination of their applications. Payment of the grant will be made in accordance with the annual programme of the MoWCSC "The grant should be spent only for the purpose for which it is provided. An organisation receiving grant should run programmes in all districts of the province where it has been established," the procedure reads.

The grant amount will be provided through banking channel. The procedure has tasked concerned local level authorities to carry out monitoring and evaluation to ascertain whether the organisation has utilised the grant.

A version of this article appears in the print on October 12, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.