Dhading, December 12

A well-equipped hostel for Chepang girls is to be built in Dhading’s Gajuri. The hostel will be built in Hangetar of Gajuri Rural Municipality.

The number of girls who go to school is very low in the Chepang community due to poverty and lack of education. Similarly, child marriage is another scourge in the community, that too can be linked to factors such as poverty, lack of education and superstition.

As there is a common tendency among school going kids of the poverty-ridden community to drop out of school in the middle due to the financial condition of the family, location of the school far away from their home and other factors, local levels here are organising various campaigns to encourage Chepang kids to go to school.

The proposed hostel facility with the capacity to accommodate 30 girls is expected to help Chepang girls who want to study. The Chepang population stands at 68,399 in the country as per the latest census.

They live in Chitwan, Makawanpur, Dhading and Gorkha, among around two dozen other districts. Some 18,500 Chepang residents live in Dhading alone.

According to former secretary of Nepal Chepang Association Tilak Chepang, who is also the first person from the Chepang community to complete his master’s degree, literacy rate in the community now reached 36.1. “Around 30 per cent of the Chepang population in the entire country are still without citizenship certificate and 75 per cent are without a land ownership certificate,” said the former secretary.

District Coordination Committee Dhading Chief Jagannath Nepal laid the foundation stone of the hostel building on Wednesday.

Feature image: File