Recently, the Department of Passport has unveiled a new plan about obtaining passports through a fast track.

This has really made it easy for those people who want to go abroad in a hurry.

But passports are not the only official document one requires as a citizen of a country. One still has to stand in a long and arduous queue for citizenship, marriage registration and so on.

Especially, in the case of driving license, people have to stand in lines for up to five hours just to submit a form. Then, a written exam and trial are conducted. One has to wait one whole month to get the driving license. It usually takes more time to complete the entire process.

As people are increasingly owning private vehicles the one month process is too long to wait.

This process must be shortened so that people can follow the due process of law rather than taking illegal means to obtain them either by bribing the corrupt officials or purchasing a bogus license from brokers. So there must be a fast track even to obtain driving license.

The Department of Transport Management should use the latest digital technology to simplify the process.

Kabita Maharjan, Lalitpur

Harsh life

This is with reference to the news story “Badi community struggling” (THT, July 6, Page 5).

The story has exposed the harsh reality of the Badi community in remote parts of the country. The issue of the poor people being tortured or mistreated by the financially well off is quite common.

The money lenders lend money to the poor at higher interest rates than the formal financial institutions do. When the locals are not able to pay them back on time they are threatened and mistreated by them.

The main cause behind this problem is the lack of work opportunity and awareness among people in rural areas. The poor Badi community does not have land to put it on mortgage to borrow loans from financial institutions and they lack proper skills to do any kind of locally available jobs that can help make them self-reliant.

The Badi community is the most socio-economically backward and illiterate one who has no access to formal financial institution and no legal knowledge about the ways of borrowing money through legal channels.

In order to lift them from such a harsh reality, the government, NGOs and financial institutions must provide them with skills based on which they can uplift themselves from perennial poverty and backwardness.

They must be provided with soft loans for income generation activities without any collateral; group collateral can be the best option to make sure that a borrower shall pay back the loans on installment basis.

Providing collateral free loan is not a long term solution; the recipients must be trained on a particular skill or a familiar area which can be easily sold at the local market or in the community on competitive basis to earn a livelihood.

This is how they can be made financially strong.

Aashruti Tripathy, via e-mail