The whole country is going through lots of suffering and hardships because of so-called unofficial Indian economic blockade for the last three months. Most importantly there is no cooking gas in almost every house. We have been forced to turn to firewood and electrical appliances to run our kitchen. In fact many households are using electrical appliances like heaters, rice cookers, induction stoves that are run by electricity. But sadly we do not even get to use those appliances because of power-cut that we are facing up to now. The state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority has increased the load-shedding time to 56 hours a week. During the winter season we need more electricity than in the summer season. But during the winter season all the hydropower plants produce less energy due to less discharge of water in the rivers. I personally have suffered power outage for more than a day. It is difficult for common people like me to run a daily household which now depends upon electricity. Because of unscheduled power-cuts by the authority, it is difficult for us to run our kitchens. So the authorities should pay proper attention to this problem. In order to end this perennial problem of load-shedding we need to generate more reservoir-based hydropower projects. Although it takes a lot of time and financing to construct the reservoir-based hydropower projects they will be the dependable sources of energy available round the year.

Yadav Karki, Kathmandu

Punish them

Apropos of the news report on social and economic crime “KL Dugar Group in the soup” (THT, Dec.4, Page 8), they say old habits die hard. It is perhaps not easy for the prominent trading house to stop doing what they have been practicing for generations that probably catapulted them from rags to riches in the first place. The vile practice speaks of their moral bankruptcy, primal insecurity and ethical penury. See the difference between these trading houses and the Facebook founder who is giving away 99 percent of his company shares to charities for the cause of mankind. Increasing tales of hoarding and black-marketing also reflect poorly on the government which is quietly presiding over looting spree in the country. Accountable governments would have kept the treason cane on the ready months ago to curb these people’s greed for anti-social and anti-national proclivity. Another businessman was found to have hoarded cooking gas and trying to smuggle to Birgunj at night hoodwinking the police and law enforcement agencies. However, the police in Bara managed to seize the cooking gas being loaded in a tractor and five persons engaged in the dealing were also arrested. The gas cylinders were found to be filled 14.2 kg of gas whereas the NOC had notified all the gas refilling stations to fill only 7.1 kg of gas so that one full capacity of gas cylinder can be distributed to two persons. The concerned authority must punish the guilty.

J. Talchabhadell, Bhaktapur