BIRENDRANAGAR, MARCH 11
Karnali Province government and the Badi community - who have been demanding land and shelter for the past two weeks - today inked a five-point memorandum of understanding.
Since February 22, people of the Badi community had been staging sit-in before the Office of the Chief Minister and Council of Ministers with the demand of cultivable land and shelter.
An MoU to this effect was signed by Karnali Province Ministry of Land Management and Cooperatives Secretary Rajendra Mishra and Hikmat Badi on behalf of the Badi Struggle Committee.
As stated in the MoU, the province government will request the federal government to provide land to the Badi community through a Cabinet decision and also carry coordinate to this end.
According to the agreement, the province government will form a three-member taskforce within two months to prepare and submit an objective report for the uplift and development of the Badi community and allow the community to operate additional programmes in the current fiscal year under its clothes, food and shelter support programme.
The province government has also agreed to include programmes related to education, health, employment, art and culture, skill-based training and income generation in next year's policy and programme for the development of the Badi community.
Likewise, Badi struggle committee will withdraw all its protest programmes.
The two sides also reached understanding on arrangement of a revolving fund and provide loan up to one million rupees at subsidised interest rates.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 12, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
